Skip to content
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL DOMESTIC ORDERS $35+
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL US ORDERS $35+
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism - Hardcover | Diverse Reads

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

Availability:
Out of stock
Sold out
$27.95
$27.95 - $27.95
$27.95
$24.99
$24.99 - $24.99
$24.99
A New York Times Bestseller
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year
A New Statesman Book to Read

From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class

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.

ISBN-13: 9780691190785

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 03-17-2020

Pages: 312

Product Dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

Anne Case is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University. Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University and Presidential Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. His books include The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton). They live in Princeton, New Jersey.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"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

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback ix

Preface xv

Introduction Death in the Afternoon 1

Part I Past As Prologue 17

1 The Calm before the Storm 19

2 Things Come Apart 28

3 Deaths of Despair 37

Part II The Anatomy Of The Battlefield 47

4 The Lives and Deaths of the More (and Less) Educated 49

5 Black and White Deaths 62

6 The Health of the Living 71

7 The Misery and Mystery of Pain 83

8 Suicide, Drugs, and Alcohol 94

9 Opioids 109

Part III What's The Economy Got To Do With It? 131

10 False Trails: Poverty, Income, and the Great Recession 133

11 Growing Apart at Work 148

12 Widening Gaps at Home 167

Part IV Why Is Capitalism Failing So Many? 185

13 How American Healthcare Is Undermining Lives 191

14 Capitalism, Immigrants, Robots, and China 212

15 Firms, Consumers, and Workers 226

16 What to Do? 245

Acknowledgments 263

Notes 265

Index 293