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"While the death rate for African Americans is still greater than the rate for whites, the turnaround among whites is shocking because of the advantages they en
by panglott 11y ago
"While the death rate for African Americans is still greater than the rate for whites, the turnaround among whites is shocking because of the advantages they enjoy, said David Weir..."
Is this just reversion to the mean? That is, is the death rate for working-class white people simply converging to to the death rate for African Americans?
If so, that's the most horrible way to end white privilege :(
- adventured 11y agoNo, because we have explanations for what's causing it: suicides, drinking, drugs. It likely includes the large increase in pill overdoses by that white demographic since the mid to late 1990s. It's something that whites in the US seem to abuse more than any other group of people in any other country. Doctors in the US have become drug addiction facilitators. Further, historically American whites had among the highest life expectancy, between 1800-1970 - right until the obesity explosion left Americans trailing behind. So what reversion to the mean? Reversion would be that American whites drop the obesity, go back to 1970 weight levels, and live five years longer.
- ajross 11y agoNo, a "reversion to the mean" is a statistical error caused by small sample sizes. For obvious reasons, you're not likely to see it when looking at death statistics for a population in the tens of millions. There's a clear hypothesis here for a real effect.
- astine 11y agoUnless you are using a different meaning of 'reversion to the mean' than I am familiar with, it's not a statistical error and has nothing to do with the size of the sample. 'Regression to the mean' happens when you have an imperfect correlation between two data fields.