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Comment by SHIT_TALKER | Hacker News Reader

The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.

This should surprise no one. These are the people who work marginal jobs and they have been the most affected by so much manufacturing moving offshore, the resultant shift to service sector employment, and the downward push on service wages created by massive immigration of unskilled South American workers. (Not to mention the political and social demonization of this cohort.)

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I don't think you can tie this to economics alone. After all, blacks and hispanics have been feeling the economic pressures as well.

Suicide, drug use, and alcoholism have deeper cultural ties. I have no idea what those ties are, but it likely won't be fixed by a 4% annual increase in wages.

I can't help but wonder if perhaps this increase in self destructive behavior is due to an increase in secularism. Blacks and Hispanics are more religious than whites, and with that religiosity comes greater church attendance which likely brings greater community support (a generalization, I know, but I'm guessing that this is probably more true than not).

Comparing the numbers here:

http://download.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2013...

to the US in general:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

The military has a slightly higher percentage of whites than the general population (and much higher percentage of males). Not quite the right age group, but I wonder how military service factors in.

I don't think you can tie this to economics alone. After all, blacks and hispanics have been feeling the economic pressures as well.

You have to be standing up to be knocked down.

I don't know, I remember seeing that Blacks and Hispanics were hit the hardest during the recession.

I found an article about this:

http://business.time.com/2011/07/26/great-recession-drives-f...

Please tell me you're under 25 y/o

Because I'm suggesting that there might be less community support today than in the past because fewer people today attend church which historically has been a major source of social interaction within a community? I fail to see how this is a ridiculous hypothesis. It might not be true, but ridiculing someone for their hypothesis instead of addressing the hypothesis itself doesn't speak well to your own level of maturity.

So what about the millions of years of human social interaction before church?

I fail to see how our primate ancestors ability to socialize outside of church somehow disproves that removing a large social component in modern American life could lead to less social support.

I just did a quick google search on church affiliation and suicide rates (to bring this back to the original article and my hypothesis), here's an interesting study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on the topic:

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.16...

So at least one study seems to support the hypothesis (interesting that it also showed increased substance abuse, which was also discussed as one of the culprit's of the higher death rate for white men).

Well if you did a quick google search, I guess I'll abandon my argument based on millions of years of human evolution.

Good theory but the same cohort in Europe has not seen the same Effect despite even higher secularization

I don't know, I don't believe Europe is really doing a bang up job of preventing suicide either, but I will admit that I don't know much about the situation, I'm just hypothesizing.

I don't know about recent trends, but I've been looking at mortality trends from the 19th century onward, and one point I _did_ key on was that from about 1960-1970 onward, white males and females saw relatively little increase in life expectancy, though black and minority experiences improved. These had lagged whites by 10-15 years, so there was a lot to make up for.

One possibility is that we're seeing a confluence of trends: continued improvements in minority life expectency due to better service and access, but still making up for past deficiencies. While whites are being hit by the leading edge of both decreased access and falling economic opportunity.

Hmm, I see what you mean but not sure why this would hit whites in particular.

Maybe because they expected more, based on their parents' experience.

There's tons of jobs out there for people with only a high school diploma. "Web Developer" is one of them.

Genuine question: have you ever heard of an uneducated, fifty-year-old unemployed factory worker becoming a successful web developer?

Maybe there are a tiny number, but I've never heard of such a thing. Re-educating fifty-year-olds into complete new fields on any mass scale is just not realistic. We're talking about millions of people that have minimal math skills, mediocre writing skills, and no computer skills. Even if we figure out a way to make older brains learn so much new information, it would take years just to catch them up to a college-ready HS diploma.

Your point is totally solid. Btw Web Developers today will on day be the auto worker of yesterday. It's cycle that capitalists systems follow. Reduce head count to boost profitability and stock performance. You do this by automation, productivity enhancements in supply chain and outsourcing. Replacing people with shell scripts is going to be a big part of what AI with do for low and high tech worker. A lot of programmers may find out how harsh capital markets feel in tight labor market. Retraining the US worker is not a sustainable prospect. So many middle age workers will find it more ugly and difficult to survive. This NYtimes article is particularly difficult to read because I know how bleak it is for many of these fallen men. In a nutshell it sucks. The US social network for such people tends to be an Ann Rand novel followed with an empty: sorry buddy. Good luck with that.

They already are the new auto workers, just without unions. Look at the downward pressure on wages, pop up hacker schools everywhere and a move for everyone to learn how to code (i.e. write CRUD apps). Basic web developers are in the crosshairs.

Maybe that's what should be done with all the fifty-year-old software developers complaining about ageism. Just train them to be web developers.

Sad to inform you, being a web developer doesn't help.

I think I needed a irony indicator ;)

That's not the sense I was using for "lots of jobs." My point was that the GP instantly compartmentalized the mortality of 40-50yo high-school graduates to being marginal workers most likely to be outsourced. This to me feels a little too narrow.

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