By now there's been a great deal of reaction to news of a study showing an increasing mortality rate among middle-aged white males in America.
Which is odd, because that's not what the study in question showed at all. In November, economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case published a paper, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicating that the mortality rates for white Americans aged 45 to 54 (and mainly those with a high-school education or less) are no longer declining and have even begun to increase, and that this is a reversal of a century-long trend.
The story was widely reported, often under headlines like No Country For Middle-Aged White Men. "A report analyzing the expected and actual death rates of working-age Americans found that whites, particularly men age 45 to 54" have increased, Time Magazine wrote. Readers on another site were told: "Middle-aged white men are bucking the trend, and not in a good way."
Then, last weekend, The New York Times wrote, in reference to the study, that death rates "have been climbing since 1999 for non-Hispanic whites age 45 to 54" and, what's more, that an analysis of death certificates by the Times "found similar trends, and showed that the rise may extend to white women."
Good find, New York Times. Except that, although the Case and Deaton study analyzed the data by race and age – and not by gender – women's mortality rates were, in fact, included in the study. Indeed, the phrase "men and women" is right there in their paper's abstract. Entirely tragic as the study's findings would be if they did apply only to white men, they simply don't.
Indeed, Andrew Gelman, a statistics professor at Columbia University, has written that, when mortality statistics are broken down by gender, the mortality rate for middle-aged white people is, in fact, much worse among women.
Yet, The Guardian, for example, referring to the study, reported that "the mortality rates for white men in the U.S. … have suddenly got much worse among the middle-aged men."
Something about women appears not to lend itself to the narrative the media and some politicians hastily built around the Case and Deaton findings.
This is, in part, the media's perennial attraction to a Man Bites Dog story: White men, those exact people you all keep complaining have so many advantages, are the ones really suffering. Now that's a story, especially if it can be implied that the root cause of their suffering is the loss of earnings and status they justly took to be their birthright. Sure, they continue to fare better economically than their black and Hispanic counterparts (and women), but the gap's closing, and we are to understand their pain and anger over this. Even when it's expressed in votes for Donald Trump because this pain is killing them.
They're at the end of their run.
To hear much of the media spin it, every single one of these people is Butch or Sundance in the last act, men once full of promise, out of options and going over a cliff.
The truth is more complex. The Case and Deaton study explicitly says that the increase in white mortality rates can be "largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis."
While it's easy to suggest hopelessness is the single cause of these issues, others factors are at play. More and more, among white rural and suburban dwellers, OxyContin and other opiates (legally prescribed, at least to one's grandmother) lead to street-purchased Oxy, and then to now-frighteningly cheap heroin often just a phone call away.
Studies show that doctors are more likely to prescribe opiates to white people, believing them less likely to get addicted or to sell them. Some say dealers like to work predominantly white neighborhoods, where there's less scrutiny and often more money.
White people may literally be dying of our own privilege. It's a public-health nightmare and a genuine tragedy but is mostly a health issue; and when Bill Clinton says that these Americans are "dying of a broken heart," he's not helping. Romanticizing addiction or suicide never helps.
Some of you may recall that "a broken heart" was not a euphemism for crack addiction back in the 1980s, when that drug ravaged inner cities, affecting predominantly black communities. Back then, the public-policy response mostly involved mandatory minimum sentences for what the public thought of as "black drugs" and heavy-handed policing of those neighbourhoods.
Similar tactics are sure as hell not being proposed now.
Rampant drug addiction and the death, disease and crime that inevitably accompany it are hitting predominantly rural white communities – but no one is suggesting that country radio is part of the problem. And enlisting a cheerful Nancy Reagan to tell folks to blithely "just say no" has so far not been suggested.
Instead, political candidates in the U.S. primaries are falling all over themselves to tell us that they will help these suffering people. Having a friend or relative who has grappled with an addiction is de rigueur in this campaign.
Even Donald Trump, a man not noted for his compassion, and quick to call people "losers," is all over this one. "For the people of New Hampshire, where you have a tremendous problem with heroin and drugs," he said to a crowd there, "it's a huge problem … It's a huge problem all over our country … and we're going to work with you people to help you solve that very big problem, and we'll get it done."
Of course, it almost goes without saying that Mr. Trump's promise to "solve that very big problem" means "we're going to build a wall" and then America's drug problem is "going to be over."
However, beyond the wall bluster, there's also increased talk of more treatment and even safe-injection sites. Many fine programs have already been launched. The more widespread use of naloxone, an overdose antidote, is saving thousands of lives.
It's hard to see a dark side in the adoption of these genuinely good ideas, sometimes by the most unlikely people, and yet I fear there may be one.