Life expectancy for men in US falls to 73 – six years less than women, study

Re:Life expectancy for men in US falls to 73 – six years les... by Analemma_ on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @10:55PM (#38273164)

The "deaths of despair" narrative has been found really wanting: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-deaths-of-despair-narrative... and it's probably time to throw it out entirely. The tl;dr is that most of the effect disappears when you use age-adjusted death rates instead of arbitrary buckets (whose average age goes up over time) and adjust for things like obesity, gun violence, and car accidents.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Life expectancy for men in US falls to 73 – six years les... by safety1st on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @11:32PM (#38273380)

I went ahead and read this because I like to give everyone's perspective a fair go.

I regret reading it. At the end of the day we have a situation where white Americans are dealing with a suicide rate that's up by 10 people per 1,000, liver disease 6 people per 1,000, overdoses 30 people per 1,000, and no age doesn't explain all of the increase. (Interestingly he doesn't even bother to touch the figures around the white maleness of suicide - that's where the bulk of the skyrocketing suicide rate is coming from, 70% of American suicides are white men).

So Yglesias' main points in response to this seem to be:

* Overdoses are the biggest part of the increase to the death rate, so the only real problem here is American opioid policy (not disagreeing that it is a big problem)

* He's got a real weaselly line in there about how adjusting for age makes the numbers less bad, but obviously that doesn't explain the opioid crisis (feels like he is trying to imply that it might explain away the other stuff, even though he has no evidence for that and it would be a false claim if he made it)

* Conspicuously absent from his analysis: That of the ~45 point increase in the death rate, ~15 points of those are not overdoses (and of the remaining 30, not all are opioids)

* Also conspicuously absent from his analysis: The fact that white men specifically are wildly overrepresented in the soaring increase to the suicide rate (they are 70% of all American suicides!)

Then he goes on to make these non-sequiturs:

* The authors of the original "disease of despair" study have published a lot of studies and those studies have reflected different narratives over time (so what? the very white, very male suicide crisis is still a fact, all the non-opioid deaths are still a fact).

* He concludes the article by saying we need an alcohol tax and the Republican hate for regulation is a big part of the problem

And then the first recommended article from his back catalog is titled "Why are young liberals so depressed?"

This guy is horrible. This article is thinly veiled racist/sexist propaganda that makes the barest effort to connect the actual data to the arguments he's trying to make. I regret every minute of my life that was spent on this hate-laced trash and I'm sad to see it on Hacker News.

[ Parent | on HN ]