NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Since the mid-1950s, an analysis of data from 26 industrialized nations reveals, the rate of death among adolescents and young adults has decreased by almost 50%. But death rates in this group from motor vehicle accidents, homicide and suicide combined have risen by 17%, according to the analysis.

And among 15- to 34-year-olds in the sampled countries, the US had the second highest rate of death from homicide, and the third highest rate of death due to motor vehicle accidents, the researchers found.

The findings come from a World Health Organization (WHO) mortality database of information submitted by each country on the annual number of deaths by cause and age group. The report, published in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, analyzes data from 1955 to 1994.

Dr. Patrick Heuveline of the University of Chicago, Illinois, the study's lead author, said that he was surprised to see that a larger percentage of young people were dying from these three common causes today than in 1955, given the overall decrease in death rates.

``We hope we are making improvements against mortality all the time, and those (three causes) seem to be causes that are sort of resistant to the change,'' he told Reuters Health.

The next step, Heuveline explained, is to examine the reasons behind these data. Since death rates from these causes have increased across entire countries, Heuveline suspects the driving forces may relate to a country's social or cultural environment.

``What this suggests is that there are different social, environmental factors that apply to everyone, explaining the difference,'' he said. ``And those are, by definition, sort of at the core of your social fabric, (therefore) much more difficult to change.''

Heuveline suggested that, in the US, the relatively high death rates from these three causes could relate, in part, to American cultural products like music and movies, which some say praise violence and risk-taking behavior.

Furthermore, Heuveline mentioned an article in a recent New York Review of Books that attributed America's higher-than-average death rate from homicide--as well as relatively higher rates of teen pregnancy and drug use--to the country's ``laissez-faire culture,'' which tends to impose fewer restrictions on behavior than other industrialized countries.

Heuveline explained that increased personal freedom can stem from American families choosing to place fewer rules or restrictions on their children than families from other industrialized countries. Or from the state itself, which allows people to carry guns and other dangerous weapons that are not permitted in other nations.

``People are freer here, but to some extent, they are also freer to hurt themselves, or put themselves at risk,'' Heuveline stated.

SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health 2002;30:29-34.

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