Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Life expectancy gap in U.S. widens to 20 years due to “truly alarming” health disparities, researchers say healthwatch by Sara Moniuszko: “In 2000, life expectancy ranged from an average of 70.5 years for Americans at the lowest end to 83.1 years for those in the highest group — a difference of 12.6 years. The gap widened to 13.9 years in 2010, jumped to 18.9 years in 2020, and now in the latest data, 20.4 years in 2021.”

Drug legalization was election’s biggest loser by Kevin Sabet: “As marijuana has become legalized, commercialized and normalized, its effects are hard to miss. The smell of skunk is everywhere. The heartbreaking stories of marijuana-induced psychosis are more common. This is partially driven by the strength of today’s marijuana, which does not resemble the weed of the past. There’s also the increased body count that comes with crashes involving drug-impaired drivers.”

Luigi Sturzo’s Lessons for American Christianity by Anna Vincenzi: “Sturzo deserves attention for the political proposal he advanced in that context: a way between liberalism, fascism, and integralism, rooted in Catholic social doctrine and the rich experience of Catholic service in civil society. His political story also has much to teach about the risk of seeking a re-Christianization of society through top-down solutions and the pursuit of cultural hegemony by means of political power.”

Fix Your Gaze by Jonathan Malesic: “If you spend hours in a museum, you will probably still be distractible once you exit. I was. But you will have done something with your time that was better than scrolling on your phone. You will have viewed and enjoyed works of human hands. You may have even been surprised or soothed or moved to tears. If you went with someone else, you will have talked to them, laughed, seen the world briefly through their eyes. You will have lived a sliver of your life in a more excellent way.”

Marriage is Booming! (Among Rich Women), and Other Interesting New Research by Stephanie Murray: “In other words, secularization has a self-reinforcing effect on fertility—it lowers the birth rate even among the remaining religious population by changing who they partner up with.”

What Republicans and Democrats Get Wrong About Crime by Jennifer Doleac: “Because increasing the probability of getting caught has such a strong deterrent effect, it is our ticket out of mass incarceration. As more people turn away from committing crime, the prison populations will fall. We can invest the dollars we save from reduced prison costs back into communities — improving policing further as well as investing in other social initiatives that make us safer, such as summer youth employment programs, increased access to mental health care and efforts to reduce lead exposure.”

This Drinking Habit Is More Dangerous Than Bingeing by Christina Caron: “We’ve long been warned about the risks of binge drinking, usually defined as having four or five drinks in a two-hour span. And now researchers are increasingly focused on a more dangerous pattern of alcohol use that they call high-intensity drinking: consuming eight or more drinks in a row for women and 10 or more drinks in a row for men.”

Desperate Haitians Who Fled to the Dominican Republic Are Being Sent Back in Cages by Hogla Enecia Pérez and Frances Robles: “Since October, more than 71,000 people have been deported to Haiti.”