Why Were the 1940s so Good and the 1960s so Bad? An Exploration of 20th Century Mortality Trends in the United States

José A. Tapia, University of Michigan

Although the decline of rates of mortality in the United States is considered to be major evidence of progress, not much attention has been paid to the rate of decline of mortality in different decades. In this investigation, the long-term trend in mortality rate was extracted, and rates of long-term mortality decline were computed. The rates of long-term decline of mortality for different demographic groups reveal substantial similarities in the patterns of mortality reduction through time. The 1940s and the 1970s were periods of accelerating decline of mortality for all ages; contrarily, in the 1960s, mortality declined at diminishing rates in all age strata—and even increased substantially for working-age and nonwhite males. At the end of the century, age-adjusted mortality is declining at accelerating rates for males, while it is stagnating at an almost zero rate of decline for women. Possible causes of these phenomena are discussed.