It seems that each week brings new information documenting the precipitous decline in the conditions of life for a large majority of the American people. Yet in all of the media commentary on the mood of anger expressed in the convulsive 2016 election campaign, little is said about the profound and worsening social crisis that is fueling it.
On Wednesday came a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzing data on deaths recorded in the United Sates in 2014. The CDC found that life expectancy for whites has begun to drop, with a more pronounced decline for women than for men.
The actual year-on-year change from 2013 to 2014 may seem small, with life expectancy at birth for whites falling from 78.9 years to 78.8 years, but the direction of the change is in and of itself shocking. As Dr. Elizabeth Arias, author of the report, notes, “The trend in life expectancy at birth has been one of improvement since national estimates were first published with 1900 data.”