A recent study discussed at a conference tells us that more people without a college degree are dying compared to those who have one.

Even though the US economy is doing well by traditional metrics, this study shows that people are not living as long, especially if they didn’t go to college. The researchers found that in 2021, people with a college degree lived about eight and a half years longer than those without one, and this gap has grown over the years.

The study also found that a lot of these early deaths were because of things like suicide, drug overdoses, and drinking too much. These problems affected people without college degrees more. The COVID-19 pandemic made things worse because it hit those without degrees harder, especially if they had jobs where they had to be around a lot of people and couldn’t work from home.

Read the full study here.