What’s Killing White Middle-Aged American Women?
“A study came out in 2008 which was our first sign that something was amiss. It found that these mortality trends were actually going in the wrong direction for some education groups. We were really perplexed and not quite sure what to do with these results.
“They’re highly significant. Between 1990 and 2010, life expectancy of low-educated white women declined by 1.2 years. That 1.2 years is about 13 years of progress washed away, so what seems to be minor changes in life expectancy signal really big problems going on underneath the surface.