This latest study shows that the effects of that are far from equally distributed. “Americans with a college degree, if they were a separate country, would be one of the best performers, just below Japan,” the authors report. That is perhaps an unfair comparison—were other countries’ populations split in the same way, presumably their graduates would also live longer, since graduates are richer and more able to insulate themselves from danger than non-graduates everywhere. In all likelihood Americans with degrees are still more likely to be murdered or to die of a drug overdose than their peers elsewhere, if not necessarily to die of cancer. But it underlines how much it is inequality that explains the general decline in American mortality. (Inequality in America more generally is the topic of Mr Deaton’s new book, “Economics in America”.)
The authors, who previously made waves with their book on “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism”, speculate that the cause of this divergence is different status.“ Jobs are allocated, not by matching necessary or useful skills, but by the use of the BA as [a] screen,” they say. That is persuasive, but not a complete answer. Greater despair might explain drug overdoses rising among the poor. It hardly explains why Americans are four times more likely to die in a car crash than people in Germany. As we recently reported, America does not do a very good job of keeping its people safe.■