Deaths of Despair 2.0

Reading the Warning in the Data Before the Crisis Arrives

In 2015, Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper describing something that should have been impossible: the death rate of middle-aged white Americans was rising, driven by suicide, overdose, and alcoholic liver disease — what they named “deaths of despair.” Over the following decade, more than 600,000 Americans died. The cause …