Events

Abstract: Population health in the United States is in crisis. Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy in the United States experienced sustained decline. Stalling progress on cardiovascular disease mortality and increases in deaths due to alcohol, drugs, and suicide have contributed to this troubling decline. Alongside this decline, socioeconomic inequality in health are widening. The causes of increasing mortality and declining life expectancy in the United States are the subject of much debate, with some pointing to hopelessness and despair as the culprits. While the population health of the United Kingdom remains better than the United States, there are similarly concerning stalls and declines in life expectancy, and UK health has worsened compared to European peers. In contrast to the prevailing narrative of despair in the United States, explanations in the United Kingdom tend to focus on austerity and declining investments in healthcare. In this talk, I share work that interrogates the determinants and patterns of population health in the United States, and investigate comparisons with Britain.  

The Sociology Seminar Series for Trinity Term is convened by Richard Breen.  For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.