As a part of it's Visiting Scholar Program, Phi Beta Kappa presents a lecture by Professor Mark D. Hayward (University of Texas at Austin)

Relative to residents of other high-income countries, Americans look toxic. Life expectancy in high-income countries has improved dramatically, except in the United States which has fallen behind. The divergence has occurred unabated for over 40 years. What are the likely factors that underlie this trend? This lecture reviews the ways in which growing social inequality in health, federal policies and the rise of New Federalism may have contributed to this adverse trend in life expectancy. Dr. Hayward also raises the issue of how fast-growing geographic inequality of mortality of U.S. states may be dampening the overall national trend. He hypothesizes that while much of the geographic divergence reflects many different policies, politics has become a growing force in increasing an array of health risks for many Americans.

Co-sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of Sociology, and the Public Policy Lab