Evidence map›Paper›PMID 37303714›Full record

ArticlePNAS nexus2023

Missing Americans: Early death in the United States-1933-2021.

Jacob Bor, Andrew C Stokes, Julia Raifman, Atheendar Venkataramani, Mary T Bassett, David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PNAS nexus, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
30citing papers in PubMed
11.3field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

30 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Family and neighborhood environments in adolescence and subsequent mortality.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026
    Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Corporate Profits and the Health of Americans.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Evolution of the US nonmetropolitan mortality disadvantage by sex, state, and year, 1999-2019.The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association · 2025
    Article
  14. Threats to Democracy and the Right to Health.American journal of public health · 2025
    Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Stolen Lives: Redress for Slavery's and Jim Crow's Ongoing Theft of Lifespan.The Russell Sage Foundation journal of the social sciences : RSF · 2024
    Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.

Jacob BorDepartment of Global Health, Boston University School of Public Health, 801 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02118, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5112-8536
Andrew C StokesDepartment of Global Health, Boston University School of Public Health, 801 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02118, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8502-3636
Julia RaifmanDepartment of Health Law, Policy, and Management, Boston University School of Public Health, 715 Albany Street, Boston, MA 02118, USA.
Atheendar VenkataramaniLeonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 3641 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7612-8903
Mary T BassettFrançois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
David HimmelsteinHunter College, City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue New York, NY 10065, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2394-4915
Steffie WoolhandlerHunter College, City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue New York, NY 10065, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8965-1058
Boston University · USCambridge Health Alliance · USUniversity of Pennsylvania · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

We assessed how many US deaths would have been averted each year, 1933-2021, if US age-specific mortality rates had equaled the average of 21 other wealthy nations. We refer to these excess US deaths as "missing Americans." The United States had lower mortality rates than peer countries in the 1930s-1950s and similar mortality in the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in the 1980s, however, the United States began experiencing a steady increase in the number of missing Americans, reaching 622,534 in 2019 alone. Excess US deaths surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 1,009,467 in 2020 and 1,090,103 in 2021. Excess US mortality was particularly pronounced for persons under 65 years. In 2020 and 2021, half of all US deaths under 65 years and 90% of the increase in under-65 mortality from 2019 to 2021 would have been avoided if the United States had the mortality rates of its peers. In 2021, there were 26.4 million years of life lost due to excess US mortality relative to peer nations, and 49% of all missing Americans died before age 65. Black and Native Americans made up a disproportionate share of excess US deaths, although the majority of missing Americans were White.

Indexed as

COVID-19demographyexcess deathsHuman Mortality Databaseinternational comparisonsracial disparitiesUnited States

Identifiers

PMID37303714
PMCPMC10257439
OpenAlexW4378714437

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.