Why Are Blue-Collar Americans Dying of Despair?
A Q&A with economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton on how disappearing low-wage jobs and the decline of family life fueled the opioid epidemic — and why politicians are still failing working-class Americans.
For the first time in a century, middle-aged mortality is on the rise.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Justin Fox: You are economists who happen to be married to each other, and who started researching mortality seven years ago, just as U.S. life expectancy was about to go into decline. Your book “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” came out in mid-March 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning to sweep across the country. So I’m a little afraid to ask, but what are you working on now?
Anne Case, emeritus professor of economics and public affairs, Princeton University: We are drilling farther into suicide, which we think is the ultimate death of despair. We are moving more into the politics of despair as well. Historically, more-healthy places voted Republican, but more recently the least-healthy places are voting Republican.