About the mortal danger of loss of perspective

The American media and blogosphere are discussing the article by Anne case and Angus Deaton.

The authors investigated the mortality of the US population aged 45 to 54 as a function of time. As expected, it decreased advances in medicine and so on. From 1970 to 2013 the mortality rate for this age group fell by 44% (note that the question here is about "Euler" and not the "Lagrangian" point of view: we look at those who in this year was from 45 to 54 years; next year it will be already other people). But it turned out that one of the groups: white people — the change in mortality rate has changed sign: after 1998 she began to grow half a percent per year. The graph below shows mortality rates for U.S. whites (USW) in comparison with the us Hispanic (USH), French (FRA) German (GER), British (UK), Canada (CAN), Australian (AUS) and Swedes (SWE) in this age group:

Two million two hundred seventy six thousand four hundred seventy one



Not illustrated American black. In fact, their death rate per hundred thousand population is higher than among whites (581.9), but quickly reduced (in 1999 it was 796.3), and if it will go at a pace that will outstrip the white black.

Why white people die in middle age? Here's a chart of the causes of deaths in this group that explain the abnormal growth:

Ninety one million six hundred fifty four thousand two hundred nine



The term "poisoning" designated drug and alcohol overdose. Growth liver disease, it seems, is also caused by ultimately alcoholism. Throw in the suicide, and we get what is essentially a white middle-aged people kill themselves one way or another.

The breakdown by education shows that this effect is mainly due to the mortality of white Americans with secondary education and below: the mortality rate among white Americans of this age with an incomplete University education in the 21st century, several fell, and among white Americans of this age with a University degree decreased significantly: now they die less than the Swedes!

In other words, American workers, blue collar, middle age die from drugs, alcohol and suicide. In fact, about drugs, the situation is clear to any American without the article case and Deaton: it is well known that the Rust Belt has long been a Crystal Meth Belt.

Increased mortality was accompanied by a General deterioration of health in the polls.

Among the discussions in the blogosphere seemed to me particularly interesting comments to the post LGM: An invisible catastrophe. They are compared with a similar situation in post-USSR. There is also a whole generation has been consistently destroy themselves.

It is very possible that these two outbreaks of mortality common cause: loss of perspective. It is important to understand that it's not just the fall in living standards: Yes, he was falling, but people in the USSR and the USA not from alimentary dystrophy dying. Rather, there are psychological withdrawal symptoms.

Here it was known that if you "behave properly" and do not show off — then you are guaranteed a normal life, "life like everyone else." It is "like everyone else" it was different in the Soviet Union and the United States: one apartment after ten years of waiting, Yes a tram to the plant, the other a house with two vehicles, but this difference is just not important. It is important that this was simple, clear and guaranteed. And suddenly this "confidence in the future," in the words of the Soviet cliché is gone.

In the USSR, it disappeared almost all. In the US, it touched on (yet?) in General, the industrial white workers of the proverbial Rust Belt: globalization and automation, coupled with the destruction of unions greatly undermined their position. There was even a new term precariat, "precarious", "risk": those whose position is hanging by a thread, someone from the disaster separates a disease (or even the failure of that same machine, to fix where there is no money, and without it to work not to get). It was all new to us white workers. If the life of Hispanic and black Americans, even the poor, in General, improved, for white blue-collar prospect has deteriorated sharply.

It seems that the person confidence in the future and perspective is needed: without them, he dies.

Interestingly, the analogy between American workers and post-Soviet people of all classes extend to their political preferences. published 

 

P. S. And remember, only by changing their consumption — together we change the world! ©

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Source: scholar-vit.livejournal.com/441527.html