Far more likely an explanation is an inverse correlation between work hours and wealth, intelligence, and education, as those are shown correlated to health and life expectancy with better and more plausible mechanisms for causation than those waved around for work hours.
I am pretty sure people are just finding different ways to say "Stress shortens your lifespan".
1) Find item/activity that creates stress
2) Graph that vs. life expectancy to see how stress = death
The chart they cite in the first place seems to have a few different trends existing where they take on a polynomial curve upwards (one just passed 1800, one ~2300) and I would personally be more interested in seeing if there's any correlation there.
One reason why the graph has multiple trends is that its multiple time series dumped on top of each other (the article entirely glosses over it being data from different points in time which would potential exhibit independent trends in premature deaths).
The article does mention that "the outlying figures to the right are those for South Korea". If I'm interpreting that correctly, it's the neat little chain to the right hand side which shows South Korea's working hours rapidly declining and potential years of life lost also falling over time; but if working hours decline you'd expect a spurious correlation to appear even if there was no causal link since healthcare standards also steadily improve over time. To the extent there is a causal link between the two in South Korea - as opposed to coincidental secular trends over time - it's probably more down to economic development than stress.
I'd expect a publication called the Economist to know how to handle panel data...
Good point. Particularly interesting because you are suggesting an inverse correlation between work hours and wealth. Can you point me to some evidence for that?
I might expect some sort of parabola, e.g. people who work very few hours tend to be less wealthy, and people who work too many hours tend to be less wealthy, but people who work at the "sweet spot" in between are the most wealthy. But an actual negative linear correlation? I wouldn't expect that.
Far more likely an explanation is an inverse correlation between work hours and wealth, intelligence, and education, as those are shown correlated to health and life expectancy with better and more plausible mechanisms for causation than those waved around for work hours.