May 11, 2017
President Donald Trump pledged to bring jobs back to America during
his campaign, appealing to a strong middle class base that’s been
struggling with stagnant wages and few job opportunities. Since the
1990s, death rates among this demographic — specifically
middle-aged white Americans without college degrees — have been on
the rise thanks to opioid addiction, alcohol abuse and suicide.
This same pattern isn’t seen in other parts of the world, reversing
decades of progress. Economist Anne Case, whose landmark study with
co-author Sir Angus Deaton first detected the rise in mortality
rates, joins this episode to discuss why “deaths of despair” are
plaguing middle-aged white Americans. Case, who has written
extensively on health over the life course, is the Alexander
Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton
University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs. She also serves as director of the Research Program in
Development Studies. Case and Deaton’s research on midlife mobility
and mortality has been cited in hundreds of media outlets around
the world. For this work, she received the Cozzarelli Prize from
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Case also was
awarded the Kenneth J. Arrow Prize in Health Economics from the
International Health Economics Association or her work on the links
between economic status and health status in childhood.