Evidence of economic growth and prosperity in the US is hard to miss. The stock market has been booming for more than 10 years and the unemployment rate is at a low 3,5%.

But the US is also the only rich country in the world where the mortality rate has been going up, not down. Much of that trend is driven by men without college degrees in America’s heartland, according to Brookings.

“Significant sectors of our society are dying prematurely from preventable deaths (deaths of despair) and almost 20% of prime aged males are out of the labor force,” according to a recent Brookings report, “Geography of Desperation in America.”

“What’s interesting is that Hispanics and blacks who started off at lower levels of life expectancy, they have continued to make progress. They’re not in the deaths of despair category for the most part,” Brookings Institution’s senior fellow Carol Graham told Yahoo Finance, adding that “The entire trend is driven by premature mortality among less-than-college-educated whites, mainly in the middle-aged years. That’s a pretty big marker that something’s really wrong.”

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