Life expectancy in the UK has risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution. For more than a century, people lived increasingly long and healthy lives. But around the turn of the millennium, that progress began to slow.

In 2015, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a landmark study showing something unexpected. From the late 1990s onwards, death rates among middle-aged white Americans without university degrees had started to rise. Three causes of death were driving the trend: suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related disease. Case and Deaton called these “deaths of despair” and they have been a topic of research in public health ever since.

Although deaths of despair were originally thought to be a specifically American problem, researchers have been concerned that similar patterns exist elsewhere. New research from my colleague Eurwen Williams and myself suggests they do. And in England and Wales, they are particularly common in one type of place: former coal mining communities.

Coal once powered the UK’s economy. At its peak in 1920, the industry employed more than 5% of the entire UK workforce. Mining shaped towns and villages across England, Wales and Scotland. Work was hard, but it provided stable employment and strong communities. That began to change in the late 20th century.

Competition from imported coal, the........

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