Increased mortality of white Americans and a decline in the health of cohorts born after World War II

Abstract

I show evidence that recent increases in mortality of white Americans are rooted in a decline in the health of cohorts born after World War II, relative to the prior trend. I identify the role of cohort health by imposing the impact of age on mortality to follow the log-linear, Gompertz form. Log mortality rates in every year between 1985 and 2015 exhibit slope changes centered at the 1946 cohort for white men and the 1949 cohort for white women, consistent with a health decline beginning precisely with those cohorts. Evidence of the cohort health decline predates the opioid epidemic.