Did the Decline in Religiosity Cause Deaths of Despair?

The precipitous rise in “deaths of despair”—the collective term of-late assigned to suicide, alcohol, and drug overdose deaths—among middle-aged, poorly educated whites, has been covered at length since Anne Case and Angus Deaton first drew attention to it in 2015. Commentators, drawn in part by evocative terminology, have linked this increase to a host of social and spiritual ills.