For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the university educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this event, Anne Case and Angus Deaton will discuss their book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism and will tie the crisis to the weakening position of labour, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a greedy health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.

Anne Case is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus at Princeton University, where she is the Director of the Research Program in Development Studies. Dr. Case has written extensively on health over the life course. She has been awarded the Kenneth J. Arrow Prize in Health Economics from the International Health Economics Association, for her work on the links between economic status and health status in childhood, and the Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for her research on midlife morbidity and mortality.

Angus Deaton (@DeatonAngus) is a Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. He was the recipient of the 2015 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

You can order the book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, (UK delivery only) from our official LSE Events independent book shop, Pages of Hackney. 

Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz) is Professor of International Relations and Director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

LSE's United States Centre (@LSE_US) is a hub for global expertise, analysis and commentary on America. Our mission is to promote policy-relevant and internationally-oriented scholarship to meet the growing demand for fresh analysis and critical debate on the United States.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series of debates about the direction the world could and should be taking after the crisis.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSECOVID19

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. 

A video of this event is available to watch at Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. 

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.