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kpete

(72,024 posts)
Tue Sep 3, 2013, 10:53 AM Sep 2013

What’s killing poor white women?.............Everything.

What’s killing poor white women?
Sep 3rd, 2013 at 10:01 am by susie
Everything:

Everything about Crystal’s life was ordinary, except for her death. She is one of a demographic—white women who don’t graduate from high school—whose life expectancy has declined dramatically over the past 18 years. These women can now expect to die five years earlier than the generation before them. It is an unheard-of drop for a wealthy country in the age of modern medicine. Throughout history, technological and scientific innovation have put death off longer and longer, but the benefits of those advances have not been shared equally, especially across the race and class divides that characterize 21st–century America. Lack of access to education, medical care, good wages, and healthy food isn’t just leaving the worst-off Americans behind. It’s killing them.

The journal Health Affairs reported the five-year drop in August. The article’s lead author, Jay Olshansky, who studies human longevity at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with a team of researchers looked at death rates for different groups from 1990 to 2008. White men without high-school diplomas had lost three years of life expectancy, but it was the decline for women like Crystal that made the study news. Previous studies had shown that the least-educated whites began dying younger in the 2000s, but only by about a year. Olshansky and his colleagues did something the other studies hadn’t: They isolated high-school dropouts and measured their outcomes instead of lumping them in with high-school graduates who did not go to college.

The last time researchers found a change of this magnitude, Russian men had lost seven years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when they began drinking more and taking on other risky behaviors. Although women generally outlive men in the U.S., such a large decline in the average age of death, from almost 79 to a little more than 73, suggests that an increasing number of women are dying in their twenties, thirties, and forties. “We actually don’t know the exact reasons why it’s happened,” Olshansky says. “I wish we did.”


MORE:
http://prospect.org/article/whats-killing-poor-white-women

9 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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What’s killing poor white women?.............Everything. (Original Post) kpete Sep 2013 OP
When the safety net is shredded, of course people fall through it. raging moderate Sep 2013 #1
Anyone who looks at the obits now and then will see a surprising number of young people. reformist2 Sep 2013 #2
So where is the PRO LIFE MOVEMENT? alp227 Sep 2013 #3
Already born, old news! lark Sep 2013 #5
K&R stonecutter357 Sep 2013 #4
k and r dembotoz Sep 2013 #6
More work, more of them are sole heads of household AngryAmish Sep 2013 #7
Who cares? We have more billionaires than any other nation! Egalitarian Thug Sep 2013 #8
this country is all about profit over people. ACA is latest, greatest iteration. KG Sep 2013 #9

raging moderate

(4,311 posts)
1. When the safety net is shredded, of course people fall through it.
Tue Sep 3, 2013, 11:06 AM
Sep 2013

During my 35 year career as a public school speech pathologist, I have worked in different communities throughout Illinois. During that time, many factors have only increased the incredible burdens these women bear throughout life. And their contributions to society are vastly underestimated. This finding does not surprise me.

reformist2

(9,841 posts)
2. Anyone who looks at the obits now and then will see a surprising number of young people.
Tue Sep 3, 2013, 11:10 AM
Sep 2013

It's hard to gauge what is a "normal" amount to see. But when you open up the section and always see someone in their 20s,30s, or 40s, it seems like something's going on...
 

Egalitarian Thug

(12,448 posts)
8. Who cares? We have more billionaires than any other nation!
Tue Sep 3, 2013, 01:32 PM
Sep 2013

So a bunch of worthless eaters kick off a few years or decades earlier than they might otherwise, what matters is how much more than enough the few who rule can get from the trade off.







































What's sad is that this is needed here.

KG

(28,753 posts)
9. this country is all about profit over people. ACA is latest, greatest iteration.
Tue Sep 3, 2013, 02:19 PM
Sep 2013

the ACA is going to do little to help really poor folk like these in this story.

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