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Comment by vfrogger | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

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