Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The American Scholar

    PROGRESS REPORT

    Mar 02, 2020 4 minutes
    REBECCA McCARTHY

    Trending Down

    For the past three years, the life expectancy of Americans has been decreasing, and Steven Woolf, a professor of population health at Virginia Commonwealth University, is trying to figure out why. He’s skeptical of the hypothesis that attributes this decrease solely to “deaths of despair”—such as those caused by suicide, opioid addiction, or alcoholism—because deaths related to hypertension, diabetes, and obesity have also increased during this period. “What is it about American life that’s causing this pattern?” he asks. “There are lots of unanswered questions.”

    After examining 60 years of data from each of the 50 states, Woolf has concluded that a decline in our

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The American Scholar

    The American Scholar13 min read
    The Widower's Lament
    STEVEN G. KELLMAN’S books include Rambling Prose, Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth, and The Translingual Imagination. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell. —Emily Dickinson I had been asleep for a few hours when the policeman a
    The American Scholar4 min read
    Five Poems
    Security confiscated the bracelet I’d slipped into my wallet but not the thin black sweater I wore as I walked out of Macy’s. The sweater still had its price tag and was so soft it soothed whoever was whispering “more, more” in my ears adorned with s
    The American Scholar7 min read
    Bubble Girl
    I’m still surprised that no one ever told me about the incubator baby kidnapping. To be fair, it happened 63 years before I was born, but it also happened half a block from where I was born, and little Marian Bleakley was perhaps the most famous baby

    Related Books & Audiobooks