Annual Research Night: «The Great Divide»

Deaths of despair has become a common term used to describe a long-standing trend in the US: In recent decades, a frighteningly large and increasing number of people in the US died from drug overdose, suicide, or alcoholism. There are several reasons for this, a major one being the broken healthcare system. Is there still hope? For the U.S., things look gloomy, Deaton and Case explained in their keynote, which was based on their newest book Death of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Europe has a better outlook, they stated, but it also needs to do more to combat polarizing trends to stop rising inequality.

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Impressions

Media coverage

Doesn’t sound good what Nobel laureate Deaton says in an interview with NZZ magazine: “The gap based on education is alarming” And: “The danger of social unrest has increased.” Society is splitting into the well-educated and the poorly educated, warn Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton and economist Anne Case. That endangers democracy, they say.

NZZ magazine article (in German)

«I have long been impressed by the extraordinary quality of the Department. You have been able to build a world-class economics department in Zurich, which provides a great public service not just for Switzerland – it is incredibly important for world economics.»

Nobel Laureate Sir Angus Deaton, Princeton University

About the speaker

Prof. Dr. Anne Case

Prof. Dr. Anne Case is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus at Princeton University. She has written extensively on health and has been awarded the Kenneth J. Arrow Prize in Health Economics from the International Health Economics Association, for her work on the links between economic status and health status in childhood, and the Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for her research on midlife morbidity and mortality.

Nobel Laureate Sir Angus Deaton

Sir Angus Deaton is Senior Scholar and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and Presidential Professor of Economics at USC. His interests span domestic and international issues and include health, happiness, development, poverty, inequality, and how to best collect and interpret evidence for policy. In 2015, he received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.”