they're even killing themselves off..white men 50+ are on the way out
Men Over 50: An Endangered Species
Faculty and Disclosures
CME/CE Information
Suicide in Men Over 50: An Epidemic
Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, resulting in over 30,000 deaths per year.[SUP][41][/SUP] This is clearly an underestimate of the true figure since many suicides are not recorded as such because of social stigma, financial considerations, and other factors. For as long as statistics about suicide have been collected in the United States there has been a very consistent strong association between suicide and 3 factors: age, gender, and race. Though women have many more suicide attempts than men,[SUP][42][/SUP] per attempt, a man is 4 times more likely to die than a woman[SUP][41][/SUP]; in fact, white males accounted for 73% of all suicides in the US in 1996.[SUP][43][/SUP]
From 1970 to 1998, US annual suicide rates per 100,000 rose from 16.2 to 18.7 in men, but decreased from 6.8 to 4.5 in women.[SUP][42,44][/SUP] In 1998, the rate of suicide in white men was 20.3/100,000 and in nonwhite men was 10.5/100,000; in male youths aged 15-24 years, these rates were 19.3 for whites and 15.6 for nonwhites (Table 3).[SUP][42][/SUP] Among the US elderly (aged ≥ 65 years), 1998 suicide rates among elderly women were similar to those among women of all ages (4.7/100,000), but rates increased significantly for elderly men (from 18.7 to 34.1/100,000). When categorized by race, these rates of suicide among elderly white men substantially increase (from 20.3 to 36.6/100,000) and increase moderately in nonwhite elderly men (from10.5 to 13.7/100,000).[SUP][42][/SUP] According to 1997 data from the National Institute of Mental Health, the highest rate of suicide is among white men older than age 85 (65/100,000).[SUP][45][/SUP]