Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

This book will be an instant classic, applying high quality social science to an urgent national matter of life and death. In exploring the recent epidemic of 'deaths of despair,' the distinguished authors uncover an absorbing historical story that raises basic questions about the future of capitalism. It is hard to imagine a timelier - or in the end, more hopeful - book in this season of our national despair. - Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids In the face of a government that failed to protect ordinary working-class Americans from the greed-fueled opioid epidemic and a media that was slow to notice the problem, Anne Case and Angus Deaton are true sentinels. Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism is an urgent and clarion call to rethink pain, inequality, justice, and the business of being human in America. This book explains America to itself. I underlined damn near every sentence. - Beth Macy, author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America In this superb book, Case and Deaton connect the dots to explain the dramatic rise of deaths of despair among working-class white Americans. Totally unexpectedly, they trace the root cause to an exorbitantly expensive health-care system that sucks - and wastes - billions of dollars and so much human talent away from improving lives. - Ezekiel J. Emanuel, University of Pennsylvania With stunning data analysis, close observation, and smoldering urgency, Case and Deaton show why mounting deaths of despair are not only a public health disaster but also an indictment of the metastasizing stratification that is undermining working-class America. - David Autor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology This book explains so many of today's headlines with clear writing, sharp storytelling, and an almost symphonic use of research in economics, public health, and history. What it summons is a powerful analysis of who we are as Americans and what we have become as a country. - Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic America is experiencing a catastrophe. Those without a college degree are not just being left behind; they are dying from deaths of despair. Case and Deaton brilliantly describe and dissect the causes and explain how we can return to a path of rising prosperity and health. All citizens - voters as well as politicians aspiring to office - should read and discuss this book. - Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England Deaths of despair among US whites with low education cannot be attributed to lack of access to health care or ignorance of healthy lifestyles. When two leading economists turn their attention to the social determinants of this modern epidemic, the result is brilliant. - Sir Michael G. Marmot, author of The Health Gap