Trendspotting: Demography Roundup #8

NewsWire: 10/19/23

• #1: White high school dropouts are driving big declines in life expectancy among non-college Americans.
• Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the Princeton economists known for their work on “deaths of despair,” released a new paper detailing a widening gap in death rates between Americans with and without a four-year college degree.
• In 1992, the life expectancy of non-college Americans was 2.5 years shorter than that of college-educated Americans. By 2021, this gap had more than tripled to 8.5 years. According to Case and Deaton, the United States is the only Western country where life expectancies are diverging for the more and less educated.

• Given that over half of Americans do not have a college degree, this wide mortality gap is disturbing. The paper implies that most Americans are suffering a grievous deterioration in health as college graduates leave them behind.
• But is this an accurate picture of what’s going on? Case and Deaton’s argument obscures two important caveats in the data. The first is selection bias. In 1992, the first year of their analysis, only 22% of Americans had a college degree. As of 2021, this figure has risen to 38%. As the share of college-educated Americans has grown, the composition of the non-college population has become comparatively more socially and economically disadvantaged, because it is basically losing its most capable (college-ready) members. Selection bias alone may account for most of the growing mortality gap.
• The second is the fact that the widening gap in life expectancy is being driven by one especially vulnerable group. The only non-college Americans who are doing dramatically worse are those at the very bottom of the education spectrum: high school dropouts. In one study, economists Paul Novosad, Charlie Rafkin, and Sam Asher analyzed U.S. mortality rates according to mean education percentiles: the least educated 10% (analogous to high school dropouts), the middle 10%-45%, and so on. They found that death rates among the least educated white men and women have risen sharply. Death rates have also risen slightly among the least educated black women. Death rates for all other education levels remained constant or fell.

• The sharp decline in life expectancy that Case and Deaton highlight does not apply to all, or even most, of non-college Americans. Instead, it is a very serious but much more limited problem.
• Why are white high school dropouts doing so much worse than everyone else? This divergence cannot be pinned on a single driver: opioid addiction and substance abuse, mental illness, obesity, soaring healthcare costs, lack of good jobs, etc. The best explanation is “all of the above.”
• IMO, we are seeing what happens in a laissez-faire society where the individuals who need the most help are increasingly detached from national institutions and their local communities. In this kind of world, the smart and resourceful fare the best. The people who are the most vulnerable and who depend on others to protect them fare the worst. In the absence of strong support—whether it’s familial, social, governmental, or religious—these are the individuals who fall through the cracks.
• Consider, for example, the question of involuntary treatment for the mentally ill. Many states pulled back on this practice or banned it decades ago, arguing that it was inhumane and that every person, no matter how ill, should always retain the right to accept or refuse care. Now the needle is moving in the other direction among members of both political parties who argue that prioritizing autonomy has led to vast suffering because patients’ own families and communities are unable to help them.

• #2: In 2022, births continued to decline in China despite birth limits being raised.
• In January, we reported on an estimate from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that there were 9.56M births in 2022. Now a new report from the country’s National Health Commission (NHC) has revised this estimate upwards, very slightly, by +20K to 9.58M. That marks a -9.6% YoY decline. And it’s the lowest number of births ever recorded since records began in 1949.
• The new birth total, combined with the estimate of 10.41M deaths given in the earlier NBS report, means the country’s population declined by a slightly smaller number in 2022 than previously reported: -830K vs. -850K. (See “For the First Time in Over 60 Years, China’s Population Declines.”)

• The NHC report also has new data on birth order. The absolute number of first-born, second-born, and third-born children all declined YoY.  But there were slight changes in the overall composition: The share of first-born babies increased by +2.0 percentage points to 46.1%. The share of second-born babies declined by -2.5 percentage points to 38.9%. And the share of third-born babies or higher increased by +0.5 percentage points to 15%.
• In 2021, China lifted the birth limit to three children. And in 2022, the share of third-borns among all births did receive a slight boost. But since such a small share of all women are mothers of two children to begin with, small changes in the share who decide to have three children have a negligible effect on the overall births. (See “China Pins Its Future on a Three-Child Policy.”)

• #3: High school graduation rates have risen despite lower test scores and higher rates of absenteeism.
• We recently wrote a NewsWire on elevated truancy rates. And we noted that this has resulted in a decline in test scores. (See “K-12 Truancy Rates Soar.”) But new data reveal a further unexpected trend: Despite higher rates of absenteeism and declining achievement, many states are witnessing an increase in graduation rates. For example, chronic absenteeism in California increased by +18.0 percentage points between the 2018-2019 school year and 2021-2022. At the same time, the graduation rate rose +2.5 percentage points. In Washington, D.C., the trend was even more dramatic: While absenteeism jumped +18.0 pp, the graduation rate increased by +6.7 pp. 
• So why are students graduating at higher rates despite lower test scores and more kids playing hooky? Many teachers are reluctant to hold students back: Grade retention is onerous, costs school districts considerable amounts of money, and may actually make it more likely that these students will drop out of school. Teachers also don’t want to deal with upset parents and administrators bent on “earning” their tax dollars by making sure kids graduate. For some, simply passing a struggling senior is easier.
• In addition, teachers’ unions have grown increasingly critical of academic standards—to the point of discrediting objective achievement measures (like national test scores) as agents of social inequity. This creates a climate in which social promotions are more widely accepted. Even teachers who believe this practice hurts the kids in their classroom may simply give up and go along.
• The rising practice of social promotion undoubtedly contributes to already-high levels of teacher burnout. (See “Teachers: Underpaid and Overworked.”) Tutoring kids who lack grade-level skills is arduous and time-consuming work, even for teachers whose efforts are fully backed by schools and by parents. Absent that support, the challenge often becomes insuperable. If no one else cares, many teachers may reason, why should I?

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