Angus deaton

High school or less 

2015 dollars

2015 dollars

College or more 

40,000

45,000

35,000

30,000

25,000

16,000

18,000

14,000

12,000

45,000

50,000

40,000

35,000

Year

2000

2005

2010

2015

Year

1995

1990

1985

2000

2005

2010

2015

1995

1990

1985

24,000

26,000

28,000

22,000

Blacks 

(right axis)

Whites 

(left axis)

Figure 16. 

Median Household Income per Member Age 45–54, by Race, 1980–2015

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ANNE CASE and ANGUS DEATON 

425

It is possible that it is not the last 20 years that matter, but rather that the 

long-run stagnation in wages and incomes has bred a sense of hopeless-

ness. But figure 17 shows that, even if we go back to the late 1960s, the 

ethnic and racial patterns of median family incomes are similar for whites, 

blacks, and Hispanics, and so can provide no basis for their sharply differ-

ent mortality outcomes after 1998. Even so, in the next section, we develop 

an account that could implicate the long-term decline in earnings among 

less educated whites.

There is a body of microeconomic literature on health determinants 

that shows that those with higher incomes have lower mortality rates and 

higher life expectancy; see National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, 

and Medicine (2015) and Raj Chetty and others (2016) for a recent large-

scale study of the United States. Income is correlated with many other rele-

vant outcomes, particularly education, which, like race and ethnicity, is not 

available to Chetty and others (2016); even so, there are careful studies on 

smaller panels, such as that by Elo and Preston (1996), who find separately