In America there's another metric that divides us : longevity. As Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton show in their new research, the gulf in life expectancy between people with and without a college degree has widened dramatically since the 1990s. As of the end of 2021, there was a shocking 8.5-year age gap between the two cohorts, with the life span of Americans without a college degree trending sharply downward in recent years.