Deaths of Despair - By Anne Case and Angus Deaton

 I recently read the book “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. It’s pretty much as depressing as it sounds especially as it’s an ongoing problem that garners very little attention, especially in this time of COVID. 

The authors define deaths of despair as deaths from suicide, alcohol poisoning and drug overdose. These deaths haven’t hit everyone equally. Nor does this seem to be a phenomenon happening outside the United States with the frequency it’s happening within and it’s hit one group especially hard, non-white Hispanics whose lifespan without a bachelor’s. The lifespan of every other ethnic group of that country continues to rise in.

 

Why, you may ask? Well, both authors are economists, one in possession of a Nobel Prize, so their approach is scientific and there’s a lot of numbers. Here’s an example. In 2017, 158,000 Americans died from deaths of despair; suicide, drug overdose, alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis.  The most efficient method of committing suicide is a gun so the availability of guns has been a contributing factor. 

 

Even though they don’t drink in the numbers of their bachelor’s degree compatriots, the non-white Hispanics are more likely to binge drink inevitably leading to liver disease. 

 

The famous sociologist Emile Durkheim states that social isolation is the primary reason for depression and suicide. The social isolation experienced by white non-Hispanics has been caused by a loss of meaning formerly provided by institutions such as the church, family and community. 

 

Non-Hispanic whites have suffered rising levels of unemployment.  For white guys with a four-year degree, the unemployment rate was between 1 and 2 percent in 2017.  For those without, this number increased from 4% in 1993 to 13% in 2017. Now, there’s been a lot of blame on immigrants for taking low skilled jobs away from Americans with resulting lower wages and the authors do admit that, in the short term, immigrants can cause wages to fall. However, if immigration is hereafter limited, workers should be able to organize and thereby negotiate for higher wages. 

 

That said, the authors argue that immigrants aren’t primarily responsible for the loss of jobs in America. It’s outsourcing to countries like Mexico and China. Manufacturing jobs are estimated to have dropped from 18 million to 12 million. Two to three million jobs have been lost to China. 

 

White non-Hispanic men are also more likely than their counterparts with bachelor’s degrees to be divorced or have never married. To add to their sense of alienation after losing a job, they do not have the community of a union to look for support nor the comfort of a church to go to. Their sense of alienation becomes extreme and so they look to drugs, alcohol and suicide for answers.

 

Capitalism is considered to be one of the primary causes for this sense of alienation by a whole population of men. Opioids are considered responsible for 70% of the drug deaths in the U.S. -a quarter of the 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. A third of those were prescribed by doctors in 2017. That’s “greater than the peak number of deaths from HIV, from guns, of from automobile crashes . . . greater than the total number of Americans who died in Vietnam. The cumulative total from 2000 to 2017 is greater than the total number of Americans who died in the two world wars.” Who encouraged and prospered from the sales of these drugs? Purdue Pharma.

 

In fact, the authors blame capitalism for what they consider to a failing healthcare system in the U.S. They consider it a drain on the economy, basically an extra tax paid by the average worker. In the U.S., the employer is responsible for paying for their employee’s medical insurance. When profits rise, instead of raises to income going to American workers, the employer must use that money to pay for the ever-increasing costs of medical insurance. By adopting a Canadian style healthcare system, Americans would save $1.4 trillion per year or $4250 for each person or $11,600 per household.

 

They go on. As I said, it’s a book filled with numbers. Suffice it to say that there’s a problem in the U.S. that we hope doesn’t metastasize across the border into Canada. We’ve already seen the nuttiness come to Alberta where oil patch workers are suffering unemployment rates never seen before and unlikely to improve significantly over the long run. Men separated from their jobs, family, and community are liable to look for answers in conspiracy theories and men such as Donald Trump and Jason Kenney who offer simple solutions to complex problems.