UT’s link is something of a lay-man’s version of the original article by Case & Deaton of Princeton.
This author, Paul Starr, included a moralist argument that went beyond the original authors.
Quote:
...On the right, in a 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,
Charles Murray argued that a decline in moral virtue since the 1960s
has led to the deterioration of life among low-income whites....
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But then Starr rejected that argument:
Quote:
...These trends put new light on current debates about disability insurance and retirement policy.
Contrary to those like Murray who attribute the growth in Social Security Disability Insurance
to a decline in the work ethic, Case and Deaton’s data suggest that the
increased number of beneficiaries reflects a real deterioration of health in middle age.
Raising the Social Security retirement age may seem to be no problem for the educated
and affluent who are in good health and do little physical labor,
but delaying retirement poses a much bigger problem for workers
who are experiencing increased burdens of pain and disability in midlife....
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Case and Deaton were more cautious in their discussion:
They first discussed time-correlations of pain-reducing drugs in society,
and secondly the increased rates of suicide among this population.
But then they added this paragraph:
Quote:
The mortality reversal observed in this period bears a resemblance
to the mortality decline slowdown in the United States during the height of the AIDS epidemic,
which took the lives of 650,000 Americans (1981 to mid-2015).
A combination of behavioral change and drug therapy brought the US AIDS epidemic under control;
age-adjusted deaths per 100,000 fell from 10.2 in 1990 to 2.1 in 2013.
However, public awareness of the enormity of the AIDS crisis
was far greater than for the epidemic described here....
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Even before reading the original article, I had wondered about AIDS and HIV in this cohort of men.
It was in the mid-1980’s that effective HIV therapy (HAART) was introduced,
and reduced the incidence and mortality rates of AIDS significantly.
This seems an attractive idea to me because any long term, effective, therapy
is difficult to maintain, and compliance correlates with education/income/gender.
.