Deaths of Despair as Related to the Value of a College Education (school, compared)

[Hemlock140]

Since this post the HR people at my employer decided that the entry-level position that I manage doesn't really require a degree, so to be more inclusive, it is no longer in the requirements. The first opening I had after that I hired a woman with no degree, and she turned out just fine. After just under a year, she took a promotion to another department. For her replacement, again entry level ($60k) with no degree requirement, I got 14 applicants. All of them had a degree, and despite being entry level, 10 had actual experience. We're training the new hire now, he just graduated with the BA earlier this year, but his experience was from related part-time work while in high school and college.

[Mike from back east]

Thanks for the recent posts. A couple of points....

I'm glad to see a lessening in the requirement for 4-year degrees for so many jobs. I recall this happening in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a knee jerk response to advances in civil rights laws as a way to avoid considering minorities for hiring. At least that was my observation at the time as this requirement seemed to pop up almost overnight. IMO that is partly why it became a mantra to "go to college" after high school.

As time has passed it's given time to develop some critiques of the original "Deaths of Despair" construct as put forth by Case and Deaton. Here's some excerpts from an opinion piece in today's NY Times.

This link WILL get you past the paywall and into the NY Times so you can read it if you wish. Still, here are some key points:

Eight years on, the central claim from Case and Deaton holds up relatively well: Deaths by suicide, overdose and liver disease have been on the rise among the white working class and the middle class. But so have gun deaths across the country, deaths among the young and suicides, which puts the data on white middle-aged men and women in a different light. Among other questions about that data, it turns out that deaths of despair increased pretty uniformly across all demographic groups and that the rise in such deaths among white middle-aged people was, while real and concerning, not all that exceptional.

Unless they’re in the top 1%, Americans are dying at higher rates than their British counterparts, and if you’re part of the bottom half of income earners, simply being American can cut as much as five years off your life expectancy. At every age below 80, Americans are dying more often than people in their peer nations: Infant mortality is up to three times as high as it is in comparison countries; one in 25 kindergartners can’t expect to see 40, a rate nearly four times as high as in other countries; and Americans between 15 and 24 are twice as likely to die as those in France, Germany, Japan and other wealthy nations.

In 2019, Black Americans were 3.8 times as likely to die as the residents of other wealthy countries, white Americans were 2.5 times as likely to die, and Hispanic Americans 1.8 times as likely to die. Americans with college degrees do substantially better than those without, but that second group represents almost two-thirds of the country. And while mortality rates show a clear geographic divergence, with life expectancy gaps as large as 20 years between the country’s richest and poorest places, just a fraction of American counties even reach the European Union average.

No matter how we slice it, there IS something wrong here in America. Case and Deaton tried to put their fingers on it and did a good job getting the ball rolling, now it behooves our nation to figure it out and take action as needed to restore longevity and good health.

[Mike from back east]

When it rains, it pours. Here's a series of recent articles in the WaPo about their yearlong study of excess deaths in America.

This link WILL get you past the paywall and into the article if you care to read it. The article has some good graphics and a "life expectancy calculator" that you may use. I told it I was a male, 75, living in AZ and it told my average life expectancy was 11 more years. Yaaay!

Still, here are a few key excerpts:

The United States is failing at a fundamental mission — keeping people alive. After decades of progress, life expectancy — long regarded as a singular benchmark of a nation’s success — peaked in 2014 at 78.9 years, then drifted downward even before the coronavirus pandemic. Among wealthy nations, the United States in recent decades went from the middle of the pack to being an outlier. And it continues to fall further and further behind.

In a quarter of the nation’s counties, mostly in the South and Midwest, working-age people are dying at a higher rate than 40 years ago

This phenomenon is exacerbated by the country’s economic, political and racial divides. America is increasingly a country of haves and have-nots, measured not just by bank accounts and property values but also by vital signs and grave markers. Dying prematurely, The Post found, has become the most telling measure of the nation’s growing inequality.

The mortality crisis did not flare overnight. It has developed over decades, with early deaths an extreme manifestation of an underlying deterioration of health and a failure of the health system to respond.

So much more in the article; it's very long. There are 3200 comments, I suggest selecting "most liked" to see the best.

[ohio_peasant]

An article from the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/6d8bad29-...1-70f8ceff6c6f .

The gist is that longevity among more affluent Americans (regardless of educational achievement) is second to none, anywhere in the world. But the American median is stagnating and falling, because it is being substantially pulled-down by the bottom third or so. The cause is not even specifically economic (income, assets, debt, investments…) as it is socio-cultural… the specific culprits cited in the article as opioids and guns. Everywhere in the Developed World there is a problem with obesity, sedentary lifestyles, exposure to environmental toxins and pollution, social isolation and fraying of support networks, economic insecurity of the working-classes… but opioids and guns were noted as quintessentially American woes.

[Mike from back east]

Thank you.

I wasn't able to find my way past the Financial Times paywall, but I found a synopsis on another site:

Lower life expectancy for America’s poor is largely driven by opioids and gun deaths. Among the 10% of Americans who die youngest, the mean age of death is 36. My calculations suggest the average age of death in [the shortest-lived 10%] is just 36 years old, compared with 55 in the Netherlands and 57 in Sweden. It hasn’t always been this way. In the 1980s, the most disadvantaged Americans lived about as long as their counterparts in France. By the early 2000s, lives at the bottom had lengthened considerably, and while a deficit was opening up, it wasn’t worrisome. But in the past decade, the lives of America’s least fortunate have shortened by an astonishing eight years. Wealthy Americans who live in the parts of the country with high opioid use and gun violence live just as long as those who live where fentanyl addiction and gunshot incidents are relatively rare. But poor Americans live far shorter lives if they grow up surrounded by guns and drugs than if they don’t.

Googling around got me to an NIH site with this info:

Background: Recent studies of US adult mortality demonstrate a growing disadvantage among southern states. Few studies have examined long-term trends and geographic patterns in US early life (ages 1 to 24) mortality, ages at which key risk factors and causes of death are quite different than among adults.

Objective: This article examines trends and variations in early life mortality rates across US states and census divisions. We assess whether those variations have changed over a 50-year time period and which causes of death contribute to contemporary geographic disparities.

Methods: We calculate all-cause and cause-specific death rates using death certificate data from the Multiple Cause of Death files, combining public-use files from 1965-2004 and restricted data with state geographic identifiers from 2005-2014. State population (denominator) data come from US decennial censuses or intercensal estimates.

Results: Results demonstrate a persistent mortality disadvantage for young people (ages 1 to 24) living in southern states over the last 50 years, particularly those located in the East South Central and West South Central divisions. Motor vehicle accidents and homicide by firearm account for most of the contemporary southern disadvantage in US early life mortality.

Contribution: Our results illustrate that US children and youth living in the southern United States have long suffered from higher levels of mortality than children and youth living in other parts of the country. Our findings also suggest the contemporary southern disadvantage in US early life mortality could potentially be reduced with state-level policies designed to prevent deaths involving motor vehicles and firearms.

[markg91359]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Thanks for the recent posts. A couple of points....

I'm glad to see a lessening in the requirement for 4-year degrees for so many jobs. I recall this happening in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a knee jerk response to advances in civil rights laws as a way to avoid considering minorities for hiring. At least that was my observation at the time as this requirement seemed to pop up almost overnight. IMO that is partly why it became a mantra to "go to college" after high school.

As time has passed it's given time to develop some critiques of the original "Deaths of Despair" construct as put forth by Case and Deaton. Here's some excerpts from an opinion piece in today's NY Times.

This link WILL get you past the paywall and into the NY Times so you can read it if you wish. Still, here are some key points:


No matter how we slice it, there IS something wrong here in America. Case and Deaton tried to put their fingers on it and did a good job getting the ball rolling, now it behooves our nation to figure it out and take action as needed to restore longevity and good health.

Let's assume that having a degree truly is not necessary to do a job.

Maybe an employer simply thinks that if he requires new employees to have a college degree it will result in a an "upgrading of job skills" among his workers. The idea would be that over time requiring employees to either have or to earn a college degree will result in better employees.

Of course, people who don't have degrees will be against this. It is often hard to see the value of something you've never had.

The concession that I would be willing to make is to hire some employees without degrees and than require them to earn a degree through continuing education or such.

Frankly, I have never understood the largescale resistance against college on the part of some of our population.

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by markg91359

Let's assume that having a degree truly is not necessary to do a job.

Maybe an employer simply thinks that if he requires new employees to have a college degree it will result in a an "upgrading of job skills" among his workers. The idea would be that over time requiring employees to either have or to earn a college degree will result in better employees.

Of course, people who don't have degrees will be against this. It is often hard to see the value of something you've never had.

The concession that I would be willing to make is to hire some employees without degrees and than require them to earn a degree through continuing education or such.

Frankly, I have never understood the largescale resistance against college on the part of some of our population.

One intriguing question is along the opposite lines: what happens to people who do have a college degree, but who find themselves chronically under-employed? There are two sub-categories. One is the prototypical philosophy major, who ends up slinging coffee at Starbucks. The other is the engineer, with say a BSE in Electrical Engineering, who either never launches in engineering employment, or gets laid off and never gets rehired in engineering.

Towards the latter point, there is a broad history, not in the US but in Eastern Europe or in various countries with unstable governments. In the 70s or 80s, a person might have been a successful degreed engineer in the say the USSR... and when it collapsed, so did the job, and the basis of employment. The 90s were famously a decade of despair, with a plunge in longevity. More recently, this might be happening say in Venezuela or in the Middle East. What happens to people thus-affected?

[L00k4ward]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

One intriguing question is along the opposite lines: what happens to people who do have a college degree, but who find themselves chronically under-employed? There are two sub-categories. One is the prototypical philosophy major, who ends up slinging coffee at Starbucks. The other is the engineer, with say a BSE in Electrical Engineering, who either never launches in engineering employment, or gets laid off and never gets rehired in engineering.

Towards the latter point, there is a broad history, not in the US but in Eastern Europe or in various countries with unstable governments. In the 70s or 80s, a person might have been a successful degreed engineer in the say the USSR... and when it collapsed, so did the job, and the basis of employment. The 90s were famously a decade of despair, with a plunge in longevity. More recently, this might be happening say in Venezuela or in the Middle East. What happens to people thus-affected?

Some immigrate?
Others get into drugs?
The entrepreneurial types start their own business, not necessarily in their professional field?
Others get any jobs they could get their hands on?

People adapt

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by markg91359

Let's assume that having a degree truly is not necessary to do a job.

Maybe an employer simply thinks that if he requires new employees to have a college degree it will result in a an "upgrading of job skills" among his workers. The idea would be that over time requiring employees to either have or to earn a college degree will result in better employees.

Of course, people who don't have degrees will be against this. It is often hard to see the value of something you've never had.

The concession that I would be willing to make is to hire some employees without degrees and than require them to earn a degree through continuing education or such.

Frankly, I have never understood the largescale resistance against college on the part of some of our population.

I very much agree with you, particularly the bolded.

As a school principal, I wanted the best educated staff I could have. And not just with the professional positions (faculty).

I didn't expect to hire a college grad to be head custodian. But being a custodian -- even the night custodian -- required some sophistication that might not immediately be obvious. Let's start with a rather sophiticated HVAC system that has to be maintained and operated, and sometimes trouble-shooted. Then there's the general electrical system in a large school. When the fire or smoke alarms go off, can the custodian show the firemen where key situations might be a factor? When a community group in the evening is abusing their rental, will he know how to handle the situation? Can the head or regular custodian interact with children appropriately? If he sees science or computer equipment running, will he be able to make a judgement about what to do? It's easy to think, "He's just a janitor", but that's not realizing the implications of the total role.

So when a custodial applicant hadn't finished high school...he was a last resort hire. Got a GED...well, that's a little better. Maybe did some trade school type of activity at a community college, more promising.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by phetaroi

I very much agree with you, particularly the bolded. As a school principal, I wanted the best educated staff I could have. And not just with the professional positions (faculty). I didn't expect to hire a college grad to be head custodian. But being a custodian --

Originally Posted by markg91359

... Frankly, I have never understood the largescale resistance against college on the part of some of our population.

This quote by Isaac Asimov tends to sum up the anti-intellectual nonsense in our nation.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

Only a fool would proudly proclaim their ignorance; such people are a sorry lot, having no idea what they're missing or how much better their lives could be. An ignorant vote is a dangerous vote and there are forces at work to deliberately mis-inform the gullible ignorant among us.

Learning is lifelong. It doesn't have to be college. It doesn't have to be a professional field. Both medical professionals and trades people need to stay abreast of advances and what's happening in their fields. If people would do something as simple as reading one of our nation's several great newspapers they could gain tremendous knowledge that, thanks to the internet, comes right into our homes and readable (or speakable) on our desktop PCs. The best $30 I spend every month is for a total access subscription to the NY Times, to include their amazing sports coverage, cooking, books, etc, as well as their variety of right/center/left opinion pieces. But the one thing I value most from the NY Times is they tell me the TRUTH.

But I stick to my basic premise of this thread, that the lack of a good education, coupled with ensuing poor job prospects in a capitalist competitive global economy, leads to a downward financial spiral as much of the country and world passes them by. Thusly dispirited, far too many people eventually commit the self-harm of alcohol and drugs. It's doesn't work the same way for all of those who succumb, there are many routes to deaths of despair.