Lives of despair?, part 2

This continues my last post, where I was looking at changes in answers to general questions about life and expectations for the future.  The basic question is whether the views of people without college degrees (which journalists like to call "the working class") have become more negative relative to the views of people with degrees.

Continuing where I left off, views on whether most people can be trusted vs.. "can't be too careful."

Declining among both, but somewhat faster among people without a college degree.  The GSS also has questions about whether people try to be helpful and treat others fairly, and they show similar trends. 

Happiness of your marriage (for married people)

Basically parallel--maybe some divergence in the 1990s and convergence since then.   For people without a college degree, there has been little change since 2000, maybe a slight increase.

Finally, overall happiness:  a clear divergence, from essentially no difference in the early 1970s.  Over the last 20 or so years, it's stayed about the same or declined slightly among people with college degrees, and declined pretty steadily among those without.  There is also a question about whether you find life exciting, pretty routine, or dull, and that doesn't show a trend for either educational group--people with college degrees are consistently more positive.

What can we conclude from all this?  As often happens, things are complicated--there are some questions which less educated people are becoming relatively more negative, some on which there's little change, and one on which less educated people are becoming more positive.  The strongest cases of less educated people becoming more negative are those which either involve current economic circumstances or are strongly influenced by current economic circumstances (overall happiness).  For things involving expectations for the future, there's no clear class divergence.  There's only one question directly involving relations with other people you know (happiness of marriage), and for that there's no sign of divergence.  However, there is divergence in assessment people in general.  And then there's the divergence in the "wrong" direction for hard work versus lucky breaks or help from others.  Overall, rather than generalized despair among the "working class," it seems like there's been a turning inward--feeling that you can count on yourself, your family, and your friends, but not on people in general. 

What about the rise in "deaths of despair"?  I will write about that sometime in the future, but basically my view is that it's a catchy but inaccurate label:  by and large, those deaths aren't direct expressions of despair.