Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they’re still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.
This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism’s excesses and make it work for everyone.
Awards and Recognition
- One of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2020
- Finalist for the PROSE Award in Economics, Association of American Publishers
- Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year
- Finalist for the Best Non-Fiction Book, Digital Book World Awards
- Finalist for the Best Book Published by a University Press, Digital Book World Awards
- One of the Financial Times Selected Titles for 2020 Visions: The Year Ahead in Books
- One of New Statesman's Books to Read in 2020
- A New York Times Bestseller
- A Wall Street Journal Bestseller
- One of Next Big Idea Club's Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of Spring
- A New York Times Editors' Choice
- One of the Financial Times' Summer Books of 2020: Economics
- One of the Strategy+Business Best Business Books 2020 in Economics
- One of The Sunday Times' Best Business Books of 2020
- Winner of the William G. Bowen Book Award, Industrial Relations Section of Princeton University
"An excellent book."—Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
"We Americans are reluctant to acknowledge that our economy serves the educated classes and penalizes the rest. But that’s exactly the situation, and Deaths of Despair shows how the immiseration of the less educated has resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, even as the economy has thrived and the stock market has soared."—Atul Gawande, New Yorker
"A highly important book."—Arlie Russell Hochschild, New York Times Book Review
"This highly important book examines the pain and despair among white blue-collar workers and suggests that the hopelessness they are experiencing may eventually extend to the entire American work force."—New York Times Editors’ Choice
"Excellent."—Joyce Carol Oates on Twitter
"Gripping. . . . [Case and Deaton] do not merely rehearse decades of mortality and wage statistics. Rather, they seek to catalogue how an entire way of life first frayed and then fell apart over the past half-century, and the cruelty of an American meritocracy that heaps lavish rewards on the winners while increasingly leaving others to rot."—Joshua Chaffin, Financial Times
"A remarkable new book."—John Harris, The Guardian
"Disturbing. . . . . Case and Deaton do a great job making the case that something has gone grievously wrong."—Jim Zarroli, NPR
"I highly, highly recommend it."—Cardiff Garcia, NPR Planet Money’s The Indicator
"[A] remarkable and poignant book."—Dani Rodrik, Project Syndicate
"The system is broken and every bit of it needs fixing. This is a sobering – and essential – book."—Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist
"Why economics really matters is illustrated in Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. . . . The authors argue that the capitalism that lifted countless people out of poverty is now destroying blue-collar America. They have solutions to make it work for all. They had better be right."—New Scientist
"[Case and Deaton] dive into and weave the data through different demographic and clinical lenses — race, gender, age, social connectedness, work history, and the most important through-line: education. Thus Case and Deaton connect the dots, literally, in the many charts that explain what factors are driving the Deaths of Despair."—Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Health Populi Blog
"The rise in premature deaths among working-class whites has become a national crisis, and the authors tie the problem to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and to a health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages to the wealthy."—Publishers Weekly
"Well-researched, compassionate."—Susan Babbitt, New York Journal of Books
"Timely and important."—Ed Balls, Financial Times
"Case and Deaton explain how every detail of this crisis unfolded, examining recent historical events and rightly placing much of the blame on the United States’ distinctive strain of capitalism, designed to protect and grow the assets of the wealthy few."—Keri Leigh Merrit, Common Dreams
"Complementing their candid prose with enlightening charts and graphs, Case and Deaton make the scale and immediacy of the problem crystal clear. This is an essential portrait of America in crisis."—Publishers Weekly
"The policies that the authors advocate not only would address deaths of despair, they would improve the health and welfare of the American people more generally."—David Canning, Science
"[a] hard-hitting study of US capitalism."—Andrew Robinson, Nature
"Deaths of Despair is designed to shine a light on a generational catastrophe that could—perhaps will—become a multigenerational disaster. It does this with chilling precision."—Mike Jakeman, Strategy+Business
"Through simple figures and clear prose, it presents a huge bodyof evidence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database and other sources that the arc of the white working class’s fate over the last two decades is long, but it bends toward nihilism and an early grave."—Gabriel Rossman, Washington Examiner
"Elaborately explained and well-presented. . . . Case and Deaton’s well-written and gloomy book was meant as a warning. Relentlessly fighting an infectious disease, the U.S. government seems to have treated it as a handbook."—Joakim Book, American Institute for Economic Research
"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
