A year before the November election, we told you that a new Princeton University study had found a riveting explanation for the curious viability of a reality TV star turned Republican presidential candidate. From then:

This will sound more than a little gruesome, but if you want to explain Donald Trump, look no further than the increasing rates of suicide and death by drugs among white, middle-aged Americans.

On Thursday, those same two Princeton academics, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, were out with a sequel to their 2015 work, published on the Brookings website:

The combined effect means that mortality rates of whites with no more than a high school degree, which were around 30 percent lower than mortality rates of blacks in 1999, grew to be 30 percent higher than blacks by 2015.

Here’s the video with a more detailed explanation:

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Members of the conversion crew take a break as the main scoreboard is lowered to the floor to be worked on as the arena gets ready for the next concert at State Farm Arena, Thursday, October 2, 2025, in Atlanta. The crew was working on creating a stage for the Friday, Oct. 3 Maxwell concert. (Jason Getz/AJC)

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com