why no asian
They’re only 5% of the U.S. population, that’s why.
And 2021 is not complete. I got the monthly update, and the numbers are still a bit too low for some things.
So for smaller slices, we’re going to have to wait til the final numbers in November or December 2022.
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Hmm, seems there is a lot of pandemic cause in there.
So, wrong thread?
This is me not caring.
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Will the “six-month lag” amount be allocated into the other specified amounts eventually, or will there be an entirely new category created, like alien abduction?
I read somewhere (right in the above paragraph) that it’s alien abduction.
It’s mostly external causes. It will be: an accident, homicide, or suicide.
It’s almost never going to be cancer or heart disease or something like that.
(alien abduction is pretty external, I would say. But also, that’s not death.)
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Generic mortality stuff herein
but here’s the AP story that set me off:
I’ll drop that in the COVID thread – most of 2021 being worse than 2020 is due to COVID
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Firearms overtook auto accidents as the leading cause of death in children
For decades, auto accidents have been the leading cause of death among children, but in 2020 guns were the No. 1 cause, researchers say.
Overall firearm-related deaths increased 13.5% between 2019 and 2020, but such fatalities for those 1 to 19 years old jumped nearly 30%, according to a research letter in New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers analyzed data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that there were a record 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the U.S. in 2020.
Patrick Carter, one of the authors of the research letter and co-director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, said about 10% of those deaths — 4,357 in total — were children.
Studies have shown that firearm violence increased during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, according to the research letter, the reason behind the increase in child deaths attributed to guns is unclear.
For decades prior to 2020, motor vehicle accidents were the leading cause of death among children. Carter tells NPR that the reason the two have swapped places is a “tale of two stories.”
“Firearm deaths we haven’t made much progress on, in fact it increased in recent years. And we have had a decrease in moto vehicle deaths,” he said.
According to a separate study, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths for more than 60 years. But over time, cars have become safer and driver education has improved. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others have pushed for better child safety in cars, taking a scientific approach to the problem, Carter said.
“We can do the same thing with firearms. We just haven’t been able to do that in the same amount of years yet,” he said. “It takes time to figure out what the underlying issues are with the problem and then finding the solutions.”
The figures between adults and children and firearms are almost an inverted image of each other. For adults, 65% of gun related deaths are attributed to suicide, while 30% are homicides and about 2% come from accidental discharges, Carter said. For children, 65% of firearm deaths are homicides and 35% are categorized as suicide, he said.
And though mass shootings, which have drastically increased over the past 30 years, are clearly part of the problem, the vast majority of kids are killed by guns in smaller, day-to-day incidents.
“Most commonly what makes the news is these horrific mass shootings, but they are a small aspect of the overall problem,” Carter said. “The smallest portion are the mass shootings. … it’s these daily deaths that are occurring making up the totality of what we are seeing.”
This was funny:
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This has COVID & non-COVID in.
From my ACHS talk:
The top causes of death for U.S. in 2021 are essentially the same overall, just switches starting at #9
But if we split it out at 10-year age groups:
More forthcoming. Much later.
here is the more forthcoming:
Yes, I will put this on the COVID thread as well
accompanying blog post
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There are two studies mentioned in this story. I’m just quoting from the study that has nothing to do w/ COVID.
Quoting some bits:
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital looked at mortality rates using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and compared them to federal and state election data from 2001 to 2019.
The team compiled data from more than 3,000 U.S. counties in all 50 states and found mortality rates decreased by 22% in Democratic counties but dropped only 11% in Republican counties, according to the study published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.
…
Mortality rates in Democratic counties dropped from 850 deaths per 100,000 people to 664, but in Republican counties, mortality rates declined from 867 to 771. The mortality gap widened across leading causes of death in the U.S. including heart disease, cancer, drug overdoses and suicide.
Note 1: I hope they used age-adjusted mortality rates.
Otherwise… this is very much bullshit
Democratic counties also saw greater reductions in deaths from chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease.
But when Warraich and colleagues stratified the data by race and ethnicity, they found there was little difference between the improvements in mortality rates of Black and Hispanic residents in Democratic and Republican counties.
Again, if the differences stem from AGE DISTRIBUTION DIFFERENCES I will just point and laugh at these idiots.
Because I can believe the white populations of “red” and “blue” counties might be a bit different in age distribution, esp. if some are concentrated in popular retirement communities, or Rust Belt areas where young people are moving away.
If somebody else can find this purported paper, maybe I can contact them and see if they did the appropriate age-adjustment. Maybe they did.
Okay, found better coverage, and the original study (via the better coverage), and it accords with other research I’ve seen at the SOA, though that was based on the socioeconomic quintiles, not political leanings.
study:
Abstract
Objective To assess recent trends in age adjusted mortality rates (AAMRs) in the United States based on county level presidential voting patterns.
Design Cross sectional study.
Setting USA, 2001-19.
Participants 99.8% of the US population.
Main outcome measures AAMR per 100 000 population and average annual percentage change (APC).
Methods The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER database was linked to county level data on US presidential elections. County political environment was classified as either Democratic or Republican for the four years that followed a November presidential election. Additional sensitivity analyses analyzed AAMR trends for counties that voted only for one party throughout the study, and county level gubernatorial election results and state level AAMR trends. Joinpoint analysis was used to assess for an inflection point in APC trends.
Results The study period covered five presidential elections from 2000 to 2019. From 2001 to 2019, the AAMR per 100 000 population decreased by 22% in Democratic counties, from 850.3 to 664.0 (average APC −1.4%, 95% confidence interval −1.5% to −1.2%), but by only 11% in Republican counties, from 867.0 to 771.1 (average APC −0.7%, −0.9% to −0.5%). The gap in AAMR between Democratic and Republican counties therefore widened from 16.7 (95% confidence interval 16.6 to 16.8) to 107.1 (106.5 to 107.7). Statistically significant inflection points in APC occurred for Democratic counties between periods 2001-09 (APC −2.1%, −2.3% to −1.9%) and 2009-19 (APC −0.8%, −1.0% to −0.6%). For Republican counties between 2001 and 2008 the APC was −1.4% (−1.8% to −1.0%), slowing to near zero between 2008 and 2019 (APC −0.2%, −0.4% to 0.0%). Male and female residents of Democratic counties experienced both lower AAMR and twice the relative decrease in AAMR than did those in Republican counties. Black Americans experienced largely similar improvement in AAMR in both Democratic and Republican counties. However, the AAMR gap between white residents in Democratic versus Republican counties increased fourfold, from 24.7 (95% confidence interval 24.6 to 24.8) to 101.3 (101.0 to 101.6). Rural Republican counties experienced the highest AAMR and the least improvement. All trends were similar when comparing counties that did not switch political environment throughout the period and when gubernatorial election results were used. The greatest contributors to the widening AAMR gap between Republican and Democratic counties were heart disease (difference in AAMRs 27.6), cancer (17.3), and chronic lower respiratory tract diseases (8.3), followed by unintentional injuries (3.3) and suicide (3.0).
Conclusion The mortality gap in Republican voting counties compared with Democratic voting counties has grown over time, especially for white populations, and that gap began to widen after 2008.
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They did use age-adjusted rates
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This is an interesting comparison
…and might be indicative of what is driving the differences
Additional demographic comparison
coverage via KHN:
excerpt:
Researchers linked information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER database with data from presidential elections and state governor races to determine how, from 2001 to 2019, political environments factored into an area’s mortality rates. They used age-adjusted rather than raw-number death rates to ensure that differences are not the result of a population’s age. That is helpful, for example, to more fairly compare an area with larger numbers of older residents — who are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases — with areas that may have younger populations.
They classified counties as “Democratic” or “Republican” for the four years that followed a presidential election. They also sought to determine whether such patterns were affected by sex, race, and ethnicity as well as urban or rural status.
…
The researchers, for instance, pointed to a previous study showing that “more liberal” state policies on tobacco control, labor, immigration, civil rights, and environmental protections were associated with better life expectancy, whereas “more conservative” state policies — such as restrictions on abortion and less stringent gun laws — were associated with lower life expectancy among women.Left-leaning states were also more likely to enact policies, such as Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which sought to widen the safety net for vulnerable populations. Of 12 states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs, nine have Republican governors and 10 voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.
The mortality-rate patterns between Republican and Democratic counties were generally consistent among racial and ethnic subgroups, such as non-Hispanic Black Americans and Hispanic people. But Black Americans had a higher mortality rate than any other race or ethnicity, regardless of political persuasion.
I will note they didn’t mention that Hispanics have lower mortality than Whites in CDC data. It’s in the study, FWIW. Actually, there’s a bigger gap between Hispanic and White, than White and Black in the data.
And, perhaps surprising to nobody, the racial/ethnic gap is larger than this political gap.
From the paper:
The two dotted lines on the bottom are the age-adjusted death rates for Hispanics, aggregated for the Dem/Rep counties. The two solid lines in the middle are for Whites. The two dashed lines on top are for Black.
The CDC did their monthly update of data, and now the “censored” period for 2021 is over.
Basically, I would say the data for 2021 are pretty much complete, but they won’t finalize it for some more months. I don’t need to wait for that, though.
I updated my cause of death ranking tables for 2021.
Here they are
spreadsheets are attached at my substack post.
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It looks like Ivana Trump died from falling down her stairs.
So I did a post on seniors dying from falls.
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Probably should find out where The Donald was.
Rule things out.
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