Opinion | Coronavirus exposes the inequality in America, and may exacerbate it

Name: As US faces protests against coronavirus lockdowns, Trump says governors got ’carried away’
Uploaded: 2020-06-16T17:00:06.000Z
Duration: 2 min 58 s
Description: As US faces protests against coronavirus lockdowns, Trump says governors got ’carried away’

Covid-19 is widening the income and health inequalities underlying the ‘deaths of despair’ epidemic among less-educated white working class Americans

Hit by two epidemics, US life expectancy is set to fall for a record fourth year

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Signs outside an art and antique shop closing down in Salt Lake City on May 8. Millions without jobs also lose health insurance as Covid-19 widens inequalities in the US. Photo: AP

Anne CaseandAngus Deaton

Published: 1:00am, 17 Jun 2020Updated: 9:13pm, 13 Oct 2020

Well before Covid-19 struck, there was another rampant epidemic in the United States, killing more Americans in 2018 than the coronavirus so far. What we call “deaths of despair” – by suicide, alcohol-related liver disease and drug overdose – have risen rapidly from about 65,000 in 1995 to 158,000 in 2018.

This increase is almost entirely confined to Americans without a four-year college degree; overall mortality rates have fallen for those with a four-year degree. Life expectancy at birth for all Americans fell between 2014 and 2017 – the first three-year drop since the 1918 Spanish flu. With two epidemics raging at once, life expectancy is set to fall again.

Behind these mortality figures are equally gloomy economic data. Real (inflation-adjusted) wages for US men without a college degree have fallen for 50 years while the earnings premium for college graduates has risen to an astonishing 80 per cent. With less-educated Americans increasingly less likely to have jobs, the share of prime-age men – and women – in the labour force has trended downward for decades since 2000.

Educated Americans are pulling away also in health outcomes. Pain, loneliness and disability have become more common among those without a degree. Now the Covid-19 pandemic has newly exposed the pre-existing inequalities.

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As US faces protests against coronavirus lockdowns, Trump says governors got ’carried away’

Historically, pandemics arguably brought greater equality. The Black Death killed so many people in 14th century Europe that labour became scarce and workers’ bargaining position improved. In the 19th century, cholera epidemics inspired the germ theory, setting the stage for the modern increase in longevity.

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