Foreign_Affairs_-_03_2020_-_04_2020

The Epidemic of Despair

March/April 2020 95

Data linking level o’ education to deaths o’ despair are not generally

available in countries outside the United States. However, there are

several studies indicating that the gap in the rate o’ mortality (from all

causes o’ death taken together) between those with low levels o’ edu-

cation and those with high levels has been closing over time in several

European countries, including the United Kingdom, in sharp contrast

to what has been happening in recent years in the United States. U.S.

rates o’ suicide have climbed to such an extent that the country ¥nds

itsel’ drifting away from its Western counterparts and into a group

that includes the countries o’ eastern Europe and the former Soviet

Union, which have long suered from high suicide rates.

Trends in life expectancy at birth also reveal how the United States

diers from other rich countries. In what was a startling event, life

expectancy in 11 European countries declined in 2015. This decline

was attributed to an in“uenza vaccine that was poorly matched to the

virus that year; many elderly people died as a consequence. Beyond

that episode, there has been a slowing o’ progress more generally

across the continent. Once again, the United Kingdom has fared par-

DANNY WILCOX FRAZIER

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Drown your sorrows: in a bar in Janesville, Wisconsin, June 2009