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What's the Matter with Kansas? Now It's the High White Death Rate
Author(s) -
Young Frank W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
sociological forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1573-7861
pISSN - 0884-8971
DOI - 10.1111/socf.12279
Subject(s) - white (mutation) , demography , population , mortality rate , gerontology , demographic economics , sociology , medicine , economics , biochemistry , gene , chemistry
This article reports empirical tests for an explanation of the anomalous finding that Case and Deaton recently identified. They found that middle‐aged white people were dying at increased rates during the 1998–2013 years. By contrast, the Hispanic and African Americans enjoyed lower rates. The explanation proposed here for this deviant trend is that the middle‐aged whites are especially vulnerable to the stress of “white status loss” as measured by the decline in the county white population. Using data for the 105 Kansas counties, the analysis replicates the divergent mortality trends and shows that white population decline predicts the rising mortality rate for the middle‐aged segment of the population. This explanation opens the door to a new branch of public health, one based on social problems, not pathogens .[Note 28. Julie Phillips's () response to this piece follows immediately ...]