Sociologists at the University of California, Riverside, commissioned a study, as residents of the United States are known to die more often from poverty than from obesity, diabetes, homicide, and drug overdose. Scientific work published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to the study, 183,000 US residents died in 2019 who did not have enough money to meet their basic needs. According to scientists, poverty is referred to as the “silent killer” in scientific circles.
The study’s authors calculated the number of Americans living in poverty, based on funds below half the median income in the United States, and compared them to causes of death across various social strata. As it turns out, dying in poverty after 40 years is much more likely than dying from suicide, gunshot wounds, homicide, complications of obesity and diabetes, and psychoactive substance overdose. It is noteworthy that the mortality rates of people from different segments were approximately the same in the first 39 years.
It is important to note that most of the data analyzed is from the time before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a major worldwide economic crisis, waves of unemployment and housing problems.
Now scientists hope that their work will help draw the attention of American authorities to the problem of the “silent killer”, revise social policy programs and eventually reduce deaths from poverty in the country.