January 06, 2018

From Contemporary Economic Policy:

Recent research shows increasing inequality in mortality among middle-aged and older adults. But this is only part of the story. Inequality in mortality among young people has fallen dramatically in the United States converging to almost Canadian rates. Increases in public health insurance for U.S. children, beginning in the late 1980s, are likely to have contributed.

From The Guardian (Sally Rooney on Gavin Corbett’s The Giving Light):

Gavin Corbett’s new book of photography, The Giving Light, is, of course, a beautiful object in itself, with its little metallic gold sun beaming out lovingly from the front cover. But Corbett, best known as a novelist, also brings a novelist’s eye to his photographs, which are somehow both entirely mundane and wholly remarkable. A stripe of sunlight lines a brick wall. A face glows silently through a bus window. Familiar things come to the surface of our attention in this volume, making us look again. The photographs are accompanied by enigmatic fragments of text: “Here is a person who has lived a full and responsible life in the world of decisions and affairs”. It’s a book worth spending time with.

From Harper's:

Gay men who are bottoms or versatiles for anal sex are more likely to be left-handed, while tops do not differ from straight men in handedness.

From The Economist:

In rich countries, the institution of marriage increasingly confers advantages on people who already have many. Affluent, highly educated men and women marry late and after careful consideration. Their marriages are highly successful—on average, almost certainly the happiest and most fulfilling that the world has ever seen. Among this privileged group, divorce is increasingly rare. The marrying classes of the West are building unions as resilient as the dutiful ones found in poorer countries.

From The Economist:

The working classes have become much less likely to marry than the middle classes, and when they do, their unions are more liable to break down quickly. Most working-class people still idealise marriage, but think of it as something to be undertaken at some point in the future, or perhaps not at all.