"The death rate rose to 729.5 deaths per 100,000 people in 2015, up from 723.2 in 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. It was one of the few times in the past 25 years that the rate has increased. A bad flu season pushed it up in 2005, and AIDS and the flu contributed to a sharp increase in 1993. In 1999, there was a tiny increase," the New York Times reports.
This time around, a combination of drug overdoses, suicide, heart disease, and Alzheimer's were proposed as explanations. More precisely, the chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics, Robert Anderson, said the death rate from heart disease has "flattened" after declining for decades, giving other causes of death a greater share of the overall rate.
The Times stresses that researchers find the rise in death rates "surprising," and are not yet certain if new data is only caused by the recently recognized "white death" bump in mortality rates for middle-aged whites. An increase in mortality rates from suicide and drug abuse among less-educated younger white Americans may also be a factor.
The increasing mortality rates from Alzheimer's and related neurological conditions are puzzling. An explanation similar to the heart-disease anomaly has been suggested ‐ in short, medical science is helping more people live long enough to be afflicted by "diseases of the elderly." Other researchers suggest lifestyle factors leading to obesity, hypertension, and diabetes -- bad diet and less exercise -- have increased the risk of neurological disorders. Perhaps we will learn that substance abuse, and other behavioral factors like those driving the "white death," are also bumping up the rates of neurological disease in the Baby Boom elderly.