Deaths of Despair

The Wall Street Journal draws a nearly inescapable conclusion:

White Americans have been hard hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the fact that their lifespans are suffering correlates with ample research showing that earning less is tied to dying earlier.

A physician interviewed for the article called these "deaths of despair," an elegant turn of phrase. I suggest what is happening to lower class whites in the U.S. is akin to what has happened to much of the Russian population: losing hope. The result in both cases has been a drop in life expectancy.