"OUR already horrendous suicide rate hit a new record high last year." This news did not surprise me when I heard it come across the airwaves on Sunday, April 24. Anyone who pays attention to global trends could see this coming.
At lighter moments I joke that the best thing about living in New Zealand is that you can see worldwide trends that are heading this way - but the worst part is that no one believes you. This is not a lighter moment. Suicide is a serious issue and one that is growing dramatically among my peer group - white, middle-aged men. The first people to notice the emerging pattern in the United States were Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case. The New York Times reported on November 2, 2015, that the researchers had uncovered a surprising shift in life expectancy among middle-aged white Americans - what traditionally would have been considered the most privileged demographic group on the planet. The researchers analysed mountains of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As reported by the Times: "They concluded that rising annual death rates among this group are being driven, not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes, but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse - alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids. The mortality rate for whites aged 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014."
The most amazing thing about this discovery is that the Princeton researchers stumbled across these findings while looking into other issues of health and disability. But, as we hear so often, everything is connected. A month before releasing this finding, Dr Deaton was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics based on a long career researching wealth and income inequality, health and wellbeing, and consumption patterns. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences credited Dr Deaton for contributing significantly to policy planning that had the potential to reduce rather than aggravate wealth inequality. "To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding."
Days before hearing the news about New Zealand's rising suicide rate, I learned of another major finding from demographic researchers in the United States. For the first time in history, the life expectancy of white American women had decreased, due primarily to drug overdose, suicide and alcoholism. Please note that the following sentence is not meant in the least to make light of the situation, but is simply stating a fact. The demographic groups that are experiencing the highest rates of drug overdose, suicide and alcoholism are also the most likely to be supporters of Donald Trump in his campaign for the US presidency.
It does not take a Nobel Laureate to observe a high level of distress among white, middle-class Americans. Trump simply taps into that angst. As reported by CBS News: "The fabulously rich candidate becomes the hero of working-class people by identifying with their economic distress. That formula worked for Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s. Today, Donald Trump's campaign benefits from a similar populist appeal to beleaguered, white, blue-collar voters - his key constituency."
