The Atlantic

Poor Americans Really Are in Despair

The wealth gap is also a happiness gap.
Source: Max Whittaker / Reuters

The and health among less-educated white Americans is often attributed to “deaths of despair”—those from conditions like substance abuse and suicide. (Suicides, the CDC reported last week, are up nearly since 1999.) The cause is often attributed to “cumulative distress,” as Princeton’s Anne.

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