Angus Deaton
Review via NPR
Deaton (and Case) argue that the alarming rise in deaths of despair amongst non-college-educated Americans — which accounts for almost two-thirds of the adult population — is intimately related to their fading economic prospects. Deaton writes that “the decline of good jobs” is a crucial driver of despair. “This decline, in response to globalization and, more importantly, technical change (robots), is made much worse in the United States than elsewhere by the grotesquely exorbitant cost of healthcare,” Deaton writes. “Beyond that, when bad things happen and people need help, the safety net in the United States is fragmentary compared with those in other rich countries.”
