snip
An even more startling contrast can be found between the mortality rates of Hispanics, and of whites with no more than a high school education. Since approximately 80 percent of middle-aged Hispanics never went to college, the educational credentials of this group largely overlap with those of white Americans with high school degrees or less. Yet the middle-aged members of the Other White America now have a mortality rate that is an astonishing 173 percent higher than that of their Hispanic peers.
What could account for such astounding disparities? Case and Deaton found that most of the increased mortality rates among middle-aged residents of the Other White America could be accounted for by just three interrelated factors: drug and alcohol overdoses, suicide, and chronic liver diseases that are usually a product of long-term alcohol abuse. (These factors are closely related in that the line between deaths formally classified as suicide and other forms of self-destruction can be quite fuzzy).
No comments:
Post a Comment