That’s a huge increase from 1999, when the mortality rate for this group of whites was about 30 percent lower than for blacks. The authors wrote that increases in deaths of despair are accompanied by a measurable deterioration in the economic and social well-being of whites lacking college education. “It’s not just their careers that have gone down the tubes, but their marriage prospects, their ability to raise children,” Deaton told the Times. “The policies that you see seem almost perfectly designed to hurt the very people who voted for him,” Deaton told the Times. Deaton told the Times that routine prescriptions for opioids should be curbed, for example.

Source: Huffington Post March 24, 2017 00:16 UTC