Life expectancy in the U.S. has fallen for the second year in a row, thanks to a combination of drug and alcohol use and suicides, according to a new report released Wednesday.
The drop was particularly large among middle-age white Americans and those living in rural communities, experts said in a report in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.
The report complements one released in December from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that also found U.S. life expectancy was down for the second straight year.
“We are seeing an alarming increase in deaths from substance abuse and despair,” said Steven Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University, a co-author of the latest report. The idea of the “American Dream” is increasingly out of reach as social mobility declines and fewer children face a better future than their parents, he said.
Politsturm: According to a recent report, life expectancy in the United States has fallen yet again. Major contributors to the decline in life expectancy include drug overdoses , alcoholism, and suicide. Historically the United States had the highest life expectancy in the world, but it now lags behind the average industrialized country. According to the report the “American Dream” is out of reach for most Americans which is causing despair which is contributing to the decline in life expectancy. The capitalist economic system has failed to provide the material conditions necessary for the mass of people to live longer lives.
The capitalist economic system is not designed to provide a high quality of life for the working class. As we have seen, the long-term prospects for the working class under this economic system are dismal. Changes and reforms to the economic system are ineffectual at addressing the major problems confronting us today. Both “laissez faire” and reformist, social democratic measures have been tried and failed. In spite of switching between the two dominant economic theories the capitalist economic system experiences periodic crises and we are constantly assured that it will never happen again; but it always does. Under capitalism we must expect these mediocre results with respect to life expectancy.