Why did the death rate increase in US cities in 1934, when it decreased in each year from 1929 to 1933

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Two points:

First, if you look closely at the numbers, you see a big rise in the death rate from heart disease and a smaller rise in the death rate from cancer during that period. It's not obvious that either would be much affected by malnutrition. (If anything, given how heart disease is driven by obeasity, the opposite may be true.) If you subtract those deaths out, the remainder (which ought to contain all the famine-related deaths) drops throughout the period. I wonder if we're not seeing the effects of the significant increase in smoking in the early decade of the century?

Secondly, to draw any valid conclusion, the numbers must be scaled by population which was increasing all through this time. (Otherwise, an increase in deaths could simply be due to more people being around.)

It's pretty clear that these numbers by themselves do not support the idea that there was a rise in famine-induced deaths in the US in the 30s.

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