The rising mortality rate among white Americans is partly due to perceptions that they are losing their dominant social status, a new public health study by the University of Toronto shows.
Researchers at the university said that the increase in the working-age mortality rate of white non-Hispanic Americans since 1999 could not be explained by the major economic crisis, an infectious disease epidemic or war. They described it as a “startling finding”.
In the paper, titled “Growing sense of social status threat and concomitant deaths of despair among whites”, the researchers highlighted that this population health phenomenon has been unfolding for the past two decades.
This could be the first time that a widespread population health phenomenon cannot be explained by social or economic status disadvantage, but instead by “a perceived threat to status,” said Arjumand Siddiqi, lead author of the study and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
“The anxiety of whites is coming from a misperception that their dominant status in society is being threatened, which is manifesting in multiple forms of psychological and physiological stress,” Siddiqi told Newsweek.
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In what the researchers call “deaths of despair”, there has been increased death from alcoholism, opioid use and overdose, and suicides among young Americans.
The life expectancy of Americans has declined over three years — a drop driven by higher death rates among people in the prime of life.
“Status is a major predictor of health so our team hypothesized that it was a perception among whites that Blacks are economically catching up to them, when, in fact, income inequality and other socioeconomic factors continue to affect Black Americans more unfavorably,” Siddiqi said.
