The Great Divide: Education, Despair, and Death

Angus Deaton and Anne Case

Annual Review of Economics, 2022, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Deaths of despair, morbidity, and emotional distress continue to rise in the United States, largely borne by those without a college degree—the majority of American adults—for many of whom the economy and society are no longer delivering. Concurrently, all-cause mortality in the United States is diverging by education in a way not seen in other rich countries. We review the rising prevalence of pain, despair, and suicide among those without a bachelor's degree. Pain and despair created a baseline demand for opioids, but the escalation of addiction came from pharma and its political enablers. We examine the politics of despair, or how less-educated people have abandoned and been abandoned by the Democratic Party. Whereas healthier states once voted Republican in presidential elections, now the less-healthy states do. We review deaths during COVID-19, finding that mortality in 2020 maintained or exacerbated existing relative mortality differences between those with and without college degrees.

Keywords: deaths of despair; opioid epidemic; COVID-19 pandemic; politics of despair; educational status; pain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 I1 I12 I24 J10 J31 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Journal Article: The great divide: education, despair, and death (2022)
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DOI: 10.1146/annurev-economics-051520-015607

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