There’s this story going around that the world isn’t so good for white men: disappearing industrial jobs, social changes that have reduced some of the traditional advantages of being male, etc. A problem for all men, perhaps, but relatively speaking maybe more of a problem for middle-aged white men in this country: the middle-aged having the difficulty to adapt to a new economy and society in mid-life, and white men seeing a negative relative status change in recent decades.
With this as background, it’s perhaps no surprise that last year’s much-publicized paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton — reporting an increase in death rates among middle-aged whites in the United States alongside a steady decrease in death rates among other ethnic groups and in other countries — was taken as further evidence of white men’s distress.
It turned out, though, that (a) the trends in death rates among men was much different than women, and, in fact, (b) after adjusting for age composition (the “middle-aged” category in the United States has had an increase in average age during the past two decades as the baby-boom generation has moved through), the death rate among middle-aged white men has actually decreased during the past few years.
The comparison with other ethnic groups and other countries still seems strong — Case and Deaton’s main findings hold up — but it’s just wrong to report that middle-aged white men are dying off. No matter how you slice it, it’s white women who are having the problem:
In particular, white women in the South:
Men still have the higher absolute death rate, it’s just that women are the ones with the bad trend.
None of this is a secret — we published a journal article explaining the issue and also wrote about it in Slate magazine — but the story keeps going around that white men are dying off.
For example, here’s economist Tyler Cowen quoting a newspaper reporter:
Here’s a line from Martin Wolf:
Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton note, in addition, a sharp relative deterioration in mortality and morbidity among middle-aged white American men, due to suicide, and drug and alcohol abuse.
They’re talking about an increase in mortality among middle-aged white men, even though it’s the women, not the men, who’ve seen an increase in death rate. But the erroneous statement fits so well with the pundits’ narrative of white male distress, it’s no surprise that it keeps popping up. When an apparent fact is so consistent with everything else you think you know, it’s hard to shake loose from it.
One twist of this particular story is that the many of the people talking about white male distress are economists who are upset with voters for supporting trade restrictions. From the standpoint of these economists, the idea that trade restrictions will save jobs or otherwise help the economy is naive, a false belief that distressed males have, and hold on to, in part because of its apparent consistency with their worldview. This may be true — I’m no expert on trade policy — but in any case it’s interesting for me to see these pundits make this mistake they are attributing to others. Facts are stubborn things, but only if you let them be.