How can we understand this? Economic trends, such as growing inequality, play an important role, but it would be too crude to draw a direct causal arrow from inequality to immiseration. Here’s how I reconstruct the constellation of causes that resulted in shrinking American life expectancy—and declining well-being more generally. My explanation is consistent with that of Case and Deaton, and of economists such as John Komlos.[22] But I reach further back into the past and put it within the general framework of cliodynamics.[23]
