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Middle-aged people laid off and unable to find work are taking another way out. They’re killing themselves. Suicide rates are soaring, according to federal data released last week. Especially in economically depressed states and job-starved regions like upstate New York. People in need of work are twice as likely to take their own lives as employed people, and people fired in their forties and fifties find it hardest to get hired again. […] … The Obama economy is stalled. It grew at a measly 0.7% annualized rate in the first quarter of this year. That’s compared with the 3.5% rate...

"Half a million people are dead who should not be dead," Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics told my Post colleagues Lenny Bernstein and Joel Achenbach. Deaton, an economics professor at Princeton, was talking about the stunning finding that he and his wife, Anne Case, made while analyzing U.S. death data from the past few decades. The researchers found that the mortality rate for white men and women ages 45 to 54 with less than a college education took a sharp turn upward in 1999 - a disconcerting reversal that has been virtually unheard of in advanced countries....

The disturbing evidence about the health of white middle-aged American working class, discovered and publicized this week by Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton and his wife Anne Case, is not tied to just one trend in the culture, policies, or economic factors at work within the United States. It is not the fault of one party or movement, but has multiple root causes. But it is something we all ought to be concerned about, both for the future fiscal and policy burden it represents, and for the broader lesson it tells us about how America is changing. The numbers clearly...

Paul Deutsch's pals in his recreational hockey league needed to find a replacement goalie Wednesday night. The 51-year-old embroidery shop owner was going to be suiting up for another team: The NHL's Minnesota Wild. The Wild signed Deutsch to an amateur tryout contract to serve as an emergency backup to starter Josh Harding for Wednesday's game against the Nashville Predators. The Wild beat the Predators 3 to 2. "Actually giving up my Wednesday night game," Deutsch said. "We play at Bloomington Ice Gardens at 9:45 p.m. till they turn the lights off. Tonight's the night. I can't make it." Deutsch...

Sometimes it is best to err on the side of caution. This, however, has not always been my practice down through the years. In fact, I am not very good when it comes to practicing anything, just ask the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage. As of late, though, I have been practicing caution like I was going to Carnegie Hall. I am not very good at it yet, but my goal is to come to the point of perfection in the area of caution as it touches my person, particularly my health and well-being. This may be because I have...

BERKELEY — So much for the empty nest blues. A University of California, Berkeley, study that tracked the relationships of dozens of women has found evidence that marriages improve once the kids have flown the coop. The study, conducted by UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality & Social Research, followed the marital ups and downs of some 100 women through early marriage, child-rearing and, in many cases, divorces, remarriages and domestic partnerships. Researchers gauged participants' levels of satisfaction with their marriages at ages 43, when most had children at home; 52, when children were starting to leave home; and 61, when...

Middle age is truly miserable, according to a study using data from 80 countries showing that depression is most common among men and women in their forties. The British and U.S. researchers found that happiness for people ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe follows a U-shaped curve where life begins cheerful before turning tough during middle age and then returning to the joys of youth in the golden years. Previous studies have shown that psychological well-being remained flat throughout life but the new findings to be published in the journal Social Science & Medicine suggest we are in for a topsy-turvy...

If you think turning 40 is bad, just wait until you turn 44. Researchers say that’s the age when people feel most depressed. Using data on two million people from 80 countries, researchers found an extraordinarily consistent pattern in depression and happiness levels that leaves us most miserable in middle age. Using a sample of one million people from the U.K., researchers discovered that for both men and women the probability of depression peaks around 44 years of age. The only country which recorded a significant gender difference was in the U.S., where unhappiness reached a peak at around 40...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even in middle age, adopting a healthy lifestyle can lower the risk for heart disease and premature death within years of changing habits, researchers reported on Thursday. Middle-aged adults who began eating five or more fruits and vegetables every day, exercising for at least 2 1/2 hours a week, keeping weight down and not smoking decreased their risk of heart disease by 35 percent and risk of death by 40 percent in the four years after they started. "The adopters of a healthy lifestyle basically caught up. Within four years, their mortality rate and rate of heart...

NEW IN TOWN SAILOR? (Click here to see current captions).

<p>You buy an electric toothbrush and regularly floss your teeth.</p> <p>Your teenage daughter calls you a "fossil," then, to soften the blow, quickly adds, "uh, because you're so well preserved."</p> <p>The paunch around your middle grows -- and you have no intention, or even inclination, of doing anything about it.</p>