Poverty is fourth-largest cause of U.S. deaths, researchers say – By Clyde Hughes (UPI) / Apr 17 2023
April 17 (UPI) — Poverty is the fourth-largest cause of death in the United States, behind only heart disease, cancer and smoking, according to an analysis released Monday by the University of California at Riverside.
The new paper on poverty and death was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors tied poverty as the cause of an estimated 183,000 deaths in the United States in 2019 among people 15 years and older.
The authors said they believe the total was a conservative estimate because data is from the year just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused spikes in deaths worldwide. They said poverty proved to be more deadly than obesity, diabetes, drug overdoses, suicides, firearms and homicides.
“Poverty kills as much as dementia, accidents, stroke, Alzheimer’s and diabetes,” David Brady, the study’s lead author and a professor of public policy at the university, said in a news release.
