Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
At the time, they were hard pressed to explain exactly why white people were suddenly dying in such large numbers when everyone else—African Americans, Hispanics, and white working-class people in other countries—seemed to be doing better. Five years later, with Deaths of Despair, they’ve returned with a book-length investigation of the trends they first identified in 2015. Their updated data points are stark: Deaths from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related disease among middle-aged white men and women skyrocketed from 30 per 100,000 in 1990 to 92 per 100,000 in 2017. The spike in these deaths is almost exclusively confined to white Americans, both men and women, without a college degree. Mortality rates among college-educated Americans have continued to fall. Mortality rates for white-working class people in other wealthy countries are similarly in decline
The authors compare what’s happening with the American white working class to what happened after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, where the resulting countries saw radical change and dire economic straits. “It is no exaggeration to compare the long-standing misery of these Eastern Europeans with the wave of despair that is driving suicides, alcohol, and drug abuse among less educated white Americans,” they write.
Case and Deaton point to something much broader at work in these numbers: the collapse of communities and the end of a way of life. Black communities experienced the ravages of deindustrialization decades before white communities did, along with an increase in mortality. These groups have since stabilized. But now, as rapid technological change and globalization have more thoroughly destroyed U.S. manufacturing, the community networks that kept the white working class together are collapsing.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2020/white-death/
The authors compare what’s happening with the American white working class to what happened after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, where the resulting countries saw radical change and dire economic straits. “It is no exaggeration to compare the long-standing misery of these Eastern Europeans with the wave of despair that is driving suicides, alcohol, and drug abuse among less educated white Americans,” they write.
Case and Deaton point to something much broader at work in these numbers: the collapse of communities and the end of a way of life. Black communities experienced the ravages of deindustrialization decades before white communities did, along with an increase in mortality. These groups have since stabilized. But now, as rapid technological change and globalization have more thoroughly destroyed U.S. manufacturing, the community networks that kept the white working class together are collapsing.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2020/white-death/
