Young white women are dying. No, not from assaults and beatings, though that continues at a high rate. The current epidemic affects women between 25 and 55 years of age. Suicides are half the reason. The other reason is drug and alcohol overdose. Most of these women live rural America, clinging to the lowest rung of the middle class. Worse, the mortality epidemic is growing at a rate “not seen since the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s.” (“White women, dying young,” excerpted from The Washington Post by The Week, May 6, 2016, pg.gs. 40-41.)
Courtesy of skyvalleychronicle.com
While demographics in this country show life expectancy is on the rise, 300,000 women have chosen to poison themselves over the past few years. (Ibid pg. 40.) The erosion of the safety net and the growing strain on the middle classes appears to play its part. In one case file, a mother chose to drink herself to death rather than continue to live on disability income and $197 in food stamps which she shared with a son, her caregiver. One morning, she closed her eyes and refused to greet another sunrise on a life not worth living. Sadly, her case isn’t unique. (Ibid 41.)
Women who work in the United States fill the bulk of the low paying service jobs with a base pay that forces them on to welfare rolls. Often they are single heads of households, struggling to exist while a deaf, dumb, blind Congress passes legislation that continues to shrink the safety net. Most of their lives these women have lived without medical care because they couldn’t afford it. Or they live in rural communities where care is nonexistent. Wherever they live, be assured the face of poverty in America is largely female. (Click)
To those who think this election shouldn’t be about gender issues, I invite you to reconsider. (Click)
