2/22/16, "Why Are White Death Rates Rising?" NY Times, Andrew J. Cherlin, op ed contributor
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It's
disturbing and puzzling news: Death rates are rising for white,
less-educated Americans. The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton reported
in December that rates have been climbing since 1999 for non-Hispanic
whites age 45 to 54, with the largest increase occurring among the least
educated. An analysis of death certificates by The New York Times found similar trends and showed that the rise may extend to white women.
Both
studies attributed the higher death rates to increases in poisonings
and chronic liver disease, which mainly reflect drug overdoses and
alcohol abuse, and to suicides. In contrast, death rates fell overall
for blacks and Hispanics.
Why
are whites overdosing or drinking themselves to death at higher rates
than African-Americans and Hispanics in similar circumstances? Some
observers have suggested that higher rates of chronic opioid prescriptions could be involved, along with whites’ greater pessimism about their finances.
Yet
I’d like to propose a different answer: what social scientists call
reference group theory. The term “reference group” was pioneered by the
social psychologist Herbert H. Hyman in 1942, and the theory was developed
by the Columbia sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1950s. It tells us
that to comprehend how people think and behave, it’s important to
understand the standards to which they compare themselves.
How
is your life going? For most of us, the answer to that question means
comparing our lives to the lives our parents were able to lead. As
children and adolescents, we closely observed our parents. They were our
first reference group.
And
here is one solution to the death-rate conundrum: It’s likely that many
non-college-educated whites are comparing themselves to a generation
that had more opportunities than they have, whereas many blacks and
Hispanics are comparing themselves to a generation that had fewer
opportunities.
When
whites without college degrees look back, they can often remember
fathers who were sustained by the booming industrial economy of postwar
America. Since then, however, the industrial job market has slowed
significantly. The hourly wages of male high school graduates declined
by 14 percent from 1973 to 2012, according to analysis of data from the
Economic Policy Institute. Although high school educated white women
haven’t experienced the same major reversal of the job market, they may
look at their husbands — or, if they are single, to the men they choose
not to marry — and reason that life was better when they were growing
up.
African-Americans,
however, didn’t get a fair share of the blue-collar prosperity of the
postwar period. They may look back to a time when discrimination
deprived their parents of equal opportunities. Many Hispanics may look
back to the lower standard of living their parents experienced in their
countries of origin. Whites are likely to compare themselves to a
reference group that leads them to feel worse off. Blacks and Hispanics
compare themselves to reference groups that may make them feel better
off.
The
sociologist Timothy Nelson and I observed this phenomenon in interviews
with high-school-educated young adult men in 2012 and 2013. A
35-year-old white man who did construction jobs said, “It’s much harder
for me as a grown man than it was for my father.” He remembered his
father saying that back when he was 35, “‘I had a house and I had five
kids or four kids.’ You know, ‘Look where I was at.’ And I’m like,
‘Well, Dad, things have changed.’”
African-American
men were more upbeat. One said: “I think there are better opportunities
now because first of all, the economy’s changing. The color barrier is
not as harsh as it was back then.”
In
addition, national surveys show striking racial and ethnic differences
in satisfaction with one’s social standing relative to one’s parents.
The General Social Survey conducted by the research organization NORC at
the University of Chicago has asked Americans in its biennial surveys
to compare their standard of living to that of their parents. In 2014,
according to my analysis, among 25- to 54-year-olds without college
degrees, blacks and Hispanics were much more positive than whites: 67
percent of African-Americans and 68 percent of Hispanics responded “much
better” or “somewhat better,” compared with 47 percent of whites.
Those
figures represent a reversal from 2000, when whites were more positive
than blacks, 64 percent to 60 percent. (Hispanics were the most positive
in nearly all years.)
But
we size ourselves up based on more than just our parents. White workers
historically have compared themselves against black workers, taking
some comfort in seeing a group that was doing worse than them. Now,
however, the decline of racial restrictions in the labor market and the
spread of affirmative action have changed that. Non-college-graduate
whites in the General Social Survey are more likely to agree that
“conditions for black people have improved” than are comparable blacks
themselves, 68 percent to 53 percent.
Reference
group theory explains why people who have more may feel that they have
less. What matters is to whom you are comparing yourself. It’s not that
white workers are doing worse than African-Americans or Hispanics.
In the fourth quarter of 2015, the median weekly earnings
[BLS] of white men aged 25 to 54 were $950, well above the same figure for
black men ($703) and Hispanic men ($701). But for some whites — perhaps
the ones who account for the increasing death rate — that may be beside
the point. Their main reference group is their parents’ generation, and
by that standard they have little to look forward to and a lot to
lament."
"Andrew J. Cherlin is a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and the
author of “Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class
Family in America.”"
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