A major new mortality study is raising alarms about the declining mental and physical health of younger Americans. Researchers tracking 45 years of U.S. death data found that Americans born after 1970 are already dying at higher rates from heart disease, cancer, overdoses, suicide, homicide, and traffic accidents than earlier generations did at the same ages. For most of the 20th century, each American generation could expect to live longer than the last.
That progress began to break down with Americans born in the 1950s and has worsened with each generation since. The study found two overlapping crises. First, millennials and Gen Xers are entering middle age with worse health outcomes than their parents and grandparents. Second, around 2010, the entire country saw a broad deterioration in death-rate trends, driven largely by stalled progress against cardiovascular disease.
Researchers pointed to possible factors including obesity, smoking, drug abuse, social stress, inequality, and the opioid epidemic. Colon cancer is rising sharply among younger adults, overdose deaths surged after the late 1990s, and heart disease improvements have slowed sharply. This is not happening by accident.
These are the signs of a declining culture. America is suffering from broken families, addiction, processed food, sedentary lifestyles, crime, spiritual emptiness, and a medical system too often focused on managing disease instead of improving health. And the answer is not giving people more Big Pharma injectables.
We must rebuild family life, fight addiction, restore public safety, promote real nutrition and exercise, and demand accountability from government leaders who failed an entire generation in order to Make America Healthy Again.
