Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

By Anne Case, Angus Deaton. 2020

889 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The book deals with the increase in deaths as a result of ‘deaths of despair’. The title of the book is Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. The book was written by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The book is generally well written and consists of three parts: Part I: Past as prologue; Part II: The anatomy of the battlefield; and Part III: What’s the economy got to do with it? The book explains the huge increase in deaths of despair and highlights the social and economic factors that make life more difficult for the working class. The authors use their expertise to present data in a scientific way based on analysis and data. According to them, ‘this is an epidemic that is not carried by a virus or a bacterium, nor is it caused by an external agent, such as poisoning of the air or the fallout from a nuclear accident, instead, people are doing this to themselves’ (p. 38). Obviously, the fastest-rising death rates were from three causes: suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease. These kinds of deaths are all self-inflicted, quickly with a gun, more slowly and less certainly with drug addiction and still more slowly through alcohol (p. 2). The authors note that drug overdoses constitute by far the largest share of deaths of despair; however, they do not provide a clear breakdown of how the three categories have changed over time. It is interesting to note that the authors used the average individual age index to denote the increase in desperation-related deaths. The authors recently noted a decline in life expectancy in the United States, at a rate not seen in the United States since 1918. The book offers a disturbing depiction of the vanishing American dream and indicates that for the white working class, America is today a land of broken families and few opportunities. Furthermore, the authors believe that ‘much more important for despair is the decline of family, community, and religion. These declines may not have happened without the decline in wages and in the quality of jobs’ (p. 183). Capitalism is no longer working for those who used to thrive in America. Ann and Deaton contend that by the year 2000, the life expectancy trend was beginning to decline for white Americans between the ages of 45 and 54 (p. 25). Life expectancy is no longer increasing as it used to be. The authors clearly link the decline

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/09e8c1ca92655754d26df9c572d03b33179636e7

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In Sociology and Political Science

  1. Gautam Rao
  2. M. Ridley
  3. Frank Schilbach
  4. Vikram Patel

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