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Photo: Erika Marble visits the grave of Edward Martin III, her fiance and father of her two children, in Littleton, N.H. Martin, 28, died of an opioid overdose. (Jim Cole/AP)
In rich countries, death rates are supposed to decline. But in the past decade and a half, middle-aged white Americans have actually been dying faster. Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton first pointed out this disturbing trend in a 2015 study that highlighted three “diseases of despair”: drugs, drinking and suicide.
