Even if COVID-19 disappeared tomorrow, America would still be facing an unprecedented social and health crisis. Does the new president see it?
In 2015, just as Donald Trump was beginning to launch his campaign to Make America Great Again, two Princeton economists, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, released a study documenting the frightening rise of “deaths of despair” among white non-college-educated Americans, showing even a decrease of life expectancy driven by alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide. The paper focused political attention on depressed regions of the United States. It added analytical heft and moral weight to other studies showing that our trade relationship with China had concentrated and unaddressed economic and social costs.
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