American demographics and deaths

January 13, 2021. What numbers explain what is going on in America today? We read and hear a lot about deaths from a certain virus yet, even accepting the claims with our validation, the raw numbers don't really tell us much, nor do the numbers in a single year offer any real insight. Americans have a short collective memory.

Case in point: After church this morning, a parishioner commented on we must be approaching the end of time, because God would not let things get "this bad" unless it was a sign of the apocalypse. Having just completed reading a book on the war in Europe, 1939-1945, along with what I remember from the tumultuous late 1960's, I had to point out that things have been "this bad" and at times much worse, not just in human history, but also in the last hundred years, In those same hundred years, humanity has never had it so good, with life expectancies up, wealth and incomes up markedly, and child mortality down tremendously. The same things that people lament today as the causes of our medical and inequality problems -- capitalism, globalization, technology -- are the drivers of the great improvement in the quality and quantity of life. As I have noted on this blog and in my fifty years in higher ed, all the advances in life have also brought more anguish, hand wringing, anxiety, suicides, drug abuse and other social ills that result not so much from capitalism or inequality as they stem from poor personal choices, bad public policy, and a declining lack in individual responsibility and accountability. Being richer has also made us more foolish, and more able to survive being foolish. But I digress from my main point....

The chart above provides a good content for the horror stories we hear from the fear mongers today, especially as it relates to mortality in the United States. First, a couple of background points: Note from the second chart (below), that while there has been a 125% increase in the ages 25-64 demographic in the last seventy years (from 80 million in 1950 to 175 million today), the over 65 cohort is up from just over ten million in 1950 to 50 million today, a 400% increase). Note carefully and you will see the surge in baby boomers (born in the ten years following World War II, with a significant increase in the over 65 years of age group that started 65 years after 1946, in 2011. And that surge has continued so where the youngest member os the baby boom have now moved into the over-65 group. The first chart (above) shows this pretty dramatically with the green line, illustrating how the mortality rate in the United States has jumped from just over 8% in 2010 to almost 9% in 2020. This should not be surprising to anyone. There are more elderly people, part of a group with a mortality rate that grows sharply after the age of 65.

What neither chart shows -- but can be confirmed elsewhere that this senior citizen cohort is both much more wealthy and also much less healthy than their comparable cohort in 1950. Economic growth, pensions, Social Security, little college debt, 401k programs and more have mad the over-65 group the wealthiest cohort in American demographics. At the same time, 'bad' lifestyle choices -- overeating, little exercise, drug and alcohol abuse, cigarette smoke and more -- have created a 50-million person elderly cohort that is approaching the upper limit of their life expectancy with poor health. Nursing homes, assisted living centers and hospices -- not at home with their kids -- are the places where people die today. So when I read of the 'surge' of Covid deaths in a nursing home for nuns, it is no supricse that the seven deaths were among nuns aged 88 to 94.

Covid is unlike the Spanish flu in many respects, mainly in Covid's much lower impact on deaths per million, the absence of even an attempt to develop a vaccine, and the substantial impact on the over 80 population, a age grows that barely existed in 1918. And the impact of Covid on African-Americans and Hispanic ethnicities has been significantly worse than on the white population, and that has more to do with obesity and lifestyle than poverty as explanations for the disparate impact. There may also be genetic disparities to explain some of the difference in mortality rates.

For a more complete set of numbers and graphs, download and study the PDF below. And yes, there will be tested on this material...every day of your life! [Hat tip: Taylor Mali]

United States of America Demographic pro.

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