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Life expectancy declined again for white Americans, according to new federal data lowering average life spans for the white population as a whole.
The new federal data, drawn from all deaths recorded in the country in 2014, showed that life expectancy for whites dropped.
Middle-age whites are dying at ever-higher rates from drug overdoses.
“The increase in death in this segment of the population was great enough to affect life expectancy at birth for the whole group,” said Elizabeth Arias, the statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics who analyzed the data, referring to whites from their mid-20s to their mid-50s.
Dr. Arias, who is preparing a larger study of mortality trends over the past 15 years, said drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide were the main drivers of the trend among whites in recent years, a pattern also found by other researchers.
Recent research has documented surprising increases in death rates among less educated whites. Last year, a paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented rising death rates among middle-age white Americans, particularly those with no more than a high school education. Other research has found rising rates among younger whites.
The pattern had puzzled demographers, but the recent analyses have pointed to suffering and anxiety among working-class whites.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/health/life-expectancy-decline-mortality.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=us&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&pgtype=article