Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case and Angus Deaton

In the summer of 2014 economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton embarked on a study of the relationship between happiness and suicide. It didn’t take long for them to find alarming statistics, and not just about suicide. The health of White middle-aged Americans, mostly men, was declining. That is not supposed to happen. For decades people all over the world have been enjoying better health and longer lives, yet the health and longevity of middle-aged men in America was declining.

So what was happening to these people?

As they studied the data something began to take shape. The three fastest-growing causes of death among this group were suicides, drug overdoses, and alcoholic liver disease — all of which are self-inflicted. But there was more.

College degrees were rare among this group, but poverty wasn’t. Long-term unemployment was a constant. Consequently, marriage and cohabitation rates were low. Institutions that have historically supported social networks were practically non-existent. For most Americans stable jobs, church membership, and strong family ties have been slowly declining for decades but were largely absent for these disaffected White middle-aged men.