Angus deaton

Figure 1. 

All-Cause Mortality by Race and Ethnicity for Age 50–54, 1999–2015

Sources:

 

CDC WONDER; National Vital Statistics System; authors’ calculations. 

Hispanics

WNHs, all

WNHs, high school

or less

BNHs

2000

2002

2004

2006

Year

2008

2010

2012

2014

Deaths per 100,000

900

800

700

600

500

400

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ANNE CASE and ANGUS DEATON 

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is similar to the rate of mortality decline in other rich countries. In contrast, 

WNHs are losing ground. Male WNHs are doing less badly than female 

WNHs, a distinction not shown here but examined in detail below, but 

mortality rates for both were higher in 2015 than in 1998. Although we do 

not have data on WNHs before 1989, we can track mortality rates for all 

whites age 45–54 starting in 1900; during the 20th century, these mortality 

rates declined from more than 1,400 per 100,000 to less than 400. After the 

late 1930s, mortality fell year by year, with the exception of a pause around 

1960 (which likely was attributable to the rapid increase in the prevalence 

of smoking in the 1930s and 1940s), with rapid decline resuming in 1970, 

when treatments for heart disease began to improve. In this historical con-

text of almost continuous improvement, the rise in mortality in midlife is 

an extraordinary and unanticipated event.

Mortality rates of BNHs age 50–54 have been and remain higher than 

those of WNHs age 50–54 as a whole, but have fallen rapidly, by about 

25 percent from 1999 to 2015; as a result of this, and of the rise in white 

mortality, the black/white mortality gap in this (and other) age group(s) has 

been closing (National Center for Health Statistics 2016; Fuchs 2016). In 

this regard, the top two lines in figure 1 are of interest; the mortality rates 

of WNHs with a high school degree or less, which were about 30 percent 

lower

 than the mortality rates of blacks (irrespective of education) in 1999 

(722 versus 945 per 100,000), by 2015 were 30 percent higher (927 versus 

703 per 100,000). The same mortality crossover between BNHs and the 

least educated WNHs can be seen in table 1 for every five-year age group 

from 25–29 to 60–64; we note that for age groups younger than 45, there