Psychological health and socioeconomic status among non-Hispanic whites

Abstract

Much attention has been paid of late to drug abuse and mortality among less-educated whites. This group, often referred to as the “white working class,” is typically defined as non-Hispanic whites who do not have Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science college degrees (1). Mortality rates have risen for members of the white working class in midlife, mainly due to increases in drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related liver mortality (2⇓⇓–5). In contrast, mortality rates for African Americans and Hispanics have continued to decline (4). These findings have contributed to a popular narrative of rising malaise among the white working class, leading to a surge in “deaths of despair” (6, 7) and to support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election (8). But has there really been an increase in feelings of despair among the white working class? In PNAS, Goldman et al. (9) examine changes since the mid-1990s in the psychological health of the non-Hispanic white population. The authors use data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, an interdisciplinary investigation of psychological well-being and physical health among Americans ages 25–74 y (10). It comprises two national surveys conducted in 1995–1996 and 2011–2014. The surveys contained a comprehensive set of questions about positive and negative mental health, which were combined into scales with known psychometric properties. A study that linked the 1995–1996 MIDUS data to National Death Index records found that positive mental health was associated with a lower risk of subsequent mortality (11). Goldman et al. (9) find a decline in psychological health between the earlier and later MIDUS survey samples for white non-Hispanics as a whole. In addition, the authors find that the … [↵][1]1Email: cherlin{at}jhu.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1