WCP: Parts and Wholes: Unpacking Reports of White Working-Class Death Rates

Posted in Visiting Scholars  |  Tagged Death rates, Jack Metzgar, John Russo, Life expectancy, Mortality, Sherry Linkon, WCP, White Working Class, Working-Class Perspectives

A study finding increased mortality for the white working-class drew a lot of attention last fall. Yet as Jack Metzgar demonstrates in this week’s Working-Class Perspectives post, the focus on race obscures some important class-based patterns.

Janell Ross recently provided a thorough rundown of black-white disparities in The Washington Post: “On just about every measure of social or economic well-being, white Americans fare better than any other group. That’s true of housing and neighborhood quality and homeownership. That’s true of overall health, health insurance coverage rates, quality of health care received, life expectancy and infant mortality. That’s true when it comes to median household earnings, wealth (assets minus debt), retirement savings and even who has a bank account.”

Ross’s bouquet of links, based on very solid sources, documents an appalling degree of racial injustice, especially toward blacks. But, unlike Case and Deaton, these sources all compare the entire white population with the entire black and Hispanic populations, with no internal differentiation. As with death rates, all these disparities might look very different in a five-category comparison like Case and Deaton use. I’m betting, for example, that whites with only high school educations or less have nowhere near the “typical” white family’s wealth of $131,000. Routinely differentiating the white population by educational attainment would not show that we overestimate racial injustice, but it would almost certainly show that we grossly underestimate class injustice.

You may read the post in its entirety (new window) and see other Working-Class Perspectives posts on our website.

The Working-Class Perspectives blog (new window) is brought to you by our Visiting Scholar for the 2015-16 academic year, John Russo, and Georgetown University English professor, Sherry Linkon. It features several regular and guest contributors.