The "deaths of despair" narrative has been found really wanting: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-deaths-of-despair-narrative-is https://www.slowboring.com/p/th

The "deaths of despair" narrative has been found really wanting: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-deaths-of-despair-narrative-is https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-deaths-of-despair-narrative... and it's probably time to throw it out entirely. The tl;dr is that most of the effect disappears when you use age-adjusted death rates instead of arbitrary buckets (whose average age goes up over time) and adjust for things like obesity, gun violence, and car accidents.