Mortality Rate Increases Dramatically Among 25-34 Year-Old White Men and Women

The rising death rates for younger non-Hispanic whites, among both men and women, stands in sharp contrast to blacks and Hispanics, according to Sarah Cohen and Gina Kolata, science and medicine writer for The New York Times. 

The analysis shows that the rise in white mortality extends well beyond the 45- to 54-year-old age group documented by a pair of Princeton economists in a research paper that startled policy makers and politicians two months ago. [Also posted here].

In fact, the rate in whites in the 25-34 year-old group is so high that Cohen and Kolata compare it to the "AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago." Put another way, the death rate in this group "make them the first generation since the Vietnam War years to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than their previous generation."

It found death rates for non-Hispanic whites either rising or flattening for all the adult age groups under 65 — a trend that was particularly pronounced in women — even as medical advances sharply reduce deaths from traditional killers like heart disease.

Graphs accompany the article showing the mortality rates among Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites, with only the latter group separated for men and women, from 1999 to 2014 for four age groups:

• 25-34
• 35-44
• 45-54
• 45-64

There are three graphs for:

• Total mortality
• Deaths from HIV/AIDS
• Deaths from drug overdoses, which the Times attributes mainly to "(p)rescription painkillers and heroin."

The analysis also shows an increase in the mortality rate from suicides (30%) and accidental poisonings (four-fold), which are described mostly as drug overdoses.

"No one has a clear answer, but researchers repeatedly speculate that the nation is seeing a cohort of whites who are isolated and left out of the economy and society and who have gotten ready access to cheap heroin and to prescription narcotic drug," add Cohen and Kolata.

As with the Nobel Prize-awarded study among middle-aged whites, the death rates "rose faster by any measure for the less educated, by 23 percent for those without a high school education, compared with only 4 percent for those with a college degree or more."