The Silence Doctors Are Keeping About Millennial Deaths

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/07/millennials-cancer-death/678896/

Excerpt:

Several years ago, in my work as a palliative-care doctor, I cared for a man in his 60s who had been mostly healthy before he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. After three different treatments had failed him, his oncologist and I told him that a fourth treatment might buy him a few weeks at best. “Send me back to Boston,” he said immediately. He wanted to smell the Atlantic, see his childhood home. He made it there, dying a week later.

My patient died on his own terms: He was comfortable, fully informed about his worsening cancer, and able to decide where he wanted to die, whom he wanted to be with. This is the type of proverbial “good death” that our medical system is slowly learning to strive for—but not necessarily for younger people.

In the hospital room next to this man was a young mother who, like me, was in her 30s. We bonded over our love of ’90s music and the Southern California beaches where we’d built sandcastles as children and stayed out late as teenagers. She, too, was dying of Stage 4 stomach cancer; I first met her when her oncology team asked if I could help manage her pain and nausea. She would rest her hands on her protruding belly, swollen with fluid and gas because cancer blocked her bowels; she couldn’t eat, so medications and liquid nutrition dripped through a large catheter threaded up a blood vessel in her arm and into her heart.

Author(s): Sunita Puri

Publication Date: 5 July 2024

Publication Site: The Atlantic

Racial Disparities in Mortality by Sex, Age, and Cause of Death

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nber.org/papers/w33905

Graphic:

Abstract:

Racial differences in mortality are large, persistent and likely caused, at least in part, by racism. While the causal pathways linking racism to mortality are conceptually well defined, empirical evidence to support causal claims related to its effect on health is incomplete. In this study, we provide a unique set of facts about racial disparities in mortality that all theories of racism and health need to confront to be convincing. We measure racial disparities in mortality between ages 40 and 80 for both males and females and for several causes of death and, measure how those disparities change with age. Estimates indicate that racial disparities in mortality grow with age but at a decreasing rate. Estimates also indicate that the source of racial disparities in mortality changes with age, sex and cause of death. For men in their fifties, racial disparities in mortality are primarily caused by disparities in deaths due to external causes. For both sexes, it is racial disparities in death from healthcare amenable causes that are the main cause of racial disparities in mortality between ages 55 and 75. Notably, racial disparities in cancer and other causes of death are relatively small even though these causes of death account for over half of all deaths. Adjusting for economic resources and health largely eliminate racial disparities in mortality at all ages and the mediating effect of these factors grows with age. The pattern of results suggests that, to the extent that racism influences health, it is primarily through racism’s effect on investments to treat healthcare amenable diseases that cause racial disparities in mortality.

Author(s): Robert Kaestner, Anuj Gangopadhyaya & Cuiping Schiman

Publication Date: June 2025

Publication Site: NBER Working Papers

Denmark is first in Europe to raise retirement age to 70

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/denmark-retirement-age-70-2tgr5rvv7

Excerpt:

Workers born after 1970 have been told they need to keep going for another three years — and many are not happy

Denmark has raised its retirement age to 70 for everyone born after 1970, becoming the first European country to reach the symbolic threshold.

While other nations are bogged down in seemingly intractable political battles over increasing the state pension age, the Danes are following a long-established principle that it should go up broadly in line with life expectancy. The average for Danes is 81.7 years. The legislation was passed with an overwhelming majority in the Danish parliament.

However, there is a good deal of public unease at the plan to oblige many people to keep working until the end of their seventh decade. Some MPs look aghast at projections that the retirement age could rise as high as 77.

Author(s): Oliver Moody

Publication Date: 22 May 2025

Publication Site: The Times

State and Local Government Employees Without Social Security Coverage: What Percentage Will Earn Pension Benefits That Fall Short of Social Security Equivalence?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v82n3/v82n3p1.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Analysis based on a synthetic population of noncovered state and local government workers confirms earlier results based on a sample of retirement plan benefit formulas: Workers with medium-length government tenures are at risk of receiving lifetime retirement income that falls short of Social Security equivalence. Given the distributions of the synthetic population of noncovered workers by occupation, retirement-plan benefit formula, and tenure in government employment, this translates to about 16 percent of all noncovered workers at risk of receiving less retirement income than they would have received from Social Security alone had they spent their whole careers in covered employment.

Although the share of workers with projected retirement benefits that fall short of Social Security equivalence is not large, the problem is serious. Social Security is intended to provide a minimum level of retirement income for all Americans. Covered public-sector workers and many private-sector workers augment their Social Security benefits with employer-sponsored retirement plans. The concern is that pension benefits ultimately will not meet that minimum level for 750,000 to 1 million noncovered workers annually who cannot augment those benefits with Social Security income.

Author(s):  Jean-Pierre Aubry, Siyan Liu, Alicia H. Munnell, Laura D. Quinby, and Glenn R. Springstead

Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 82 No. 3, 2022 (released August 2022)

Publication Date: August 2022

Publication Site: Social Security Administration