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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat’s killing poor white women?.............Everything.
Whats killing poor white women?
Sep 3rd, 2013 at 10:01 am by susie
Everything:
Everything about Crystals life was ordinary, except for her death. She is one of a demographicwhite women who dont graduate from high schoolwhose 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 21stcentury America. Lack of access to education, medical care, good wages, and healthy food isnt just leaving the worst-off Americans behind. Its killing them.
The journal Health Affairs reported the five-year drop in August. The articles 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 hadnt: 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 dont know the exact reasons why its happened, Olshansky says. I wish we did.
MORE:
http://prospect.org/article/whats-killing-poor-white-women
raging moderate
(4,311 posts)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)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...
alp227
(32,062 posts)Oh wait they too busy keeping poor women barefoot and pregnant.
lark
(23,160 posts)They only care about the fresh lives.
stonecutter357
(12,697 posts)dembotoz
(16,850 posts)AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)Higher stress.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)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)the ACA is going to do little to help really poor folk like these in this story.