America’s health care system includes the world’s most advanced medical technology, yet economic class, education levels and an epidemic of opioid addiction could be playing greater roles than science in determining who lives and dies.
The nation’s opioid epidemic, which has hit Western Pennsylvania hard, is starting to skew general health statistics, two Princeton University economists recently suggested. In particular, overdoses related to opioid and heroin addiction are helping to push death rates for middle-aged Americans with less education to startling levels.
Analyzing data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other sources, economists Anne Case and Nobel Prize-winning Angus Deaton found that the mortality rate for white Americans between ages 45 and 54 with a high school education or less rose by 22 percent from 1999 to 2014, while falling for those with a college education. By contrast, the death rate for middle-aged black and Hispanic Americans continued to drop, as did death rates for younger and older people of all races.
The years covered by the study parallel the nation’s opioid epidemic, which started with the explosion of prescription painkillers in the late 1990s. Other reasons for the rise in deaths among middle-aged whites included alcohol abuse and unprecedented rates of suicide. Last year in Allegheny County, 307 people died from drug overdoses, part of the 2,400 fatal overdoses across Pennsylvania.
Improving outcomes for overall health will be difficult if mortality rates for middle-aged white people with less education continue to rise. Finding out what’s wrong is the first step toward making it right.
First Published: December 5, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
