In the U.S., happiness gradually increased among marginalized populations (albeit with a lag) after the gender and civil rights movements awarded them more liberties. Currently, the demographic with the bleakest outlook is less-than-college-educated white men. According to Carol Graham, a Brookings researcher and public policy professor at the University of Maryland College Park, out-of-work white men are “overrepresented in the crisis of deaths of despair” (suicide, drug overdose, liver disease). Financial hardship does not explain this despair; studies find that when women lose their jobs,
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