Drug and Alcohol Abuse: the Role of Economic Insecurity

Abstract

L ife expectancy in the United States (US) rose nearly every year between 1943 and 2014, 1 but between 2014 and 2017 the country experienced the longest sustained decline since 1915-18. 2-5 Much of the decline has been attributed to the drug epidemic. 5-8 Increased availability of opioids resulting from changes in marketing, prescribing, and insurance coverage of prescription opioids, which led to wider black market dissemination of heroin, fentanyl, and other opioids almost certainly contributed to growing drug abuse. 9-12 Indeed, drug-related mortality has increased dramatically in the US: the age-adjusted rate in 2017 (21.7 per 100,000) was 3.6 times that in 1999 (6.1 per 100,000). 13 But the US mortality crisis may extend beyond the drug epidemic. Some researchers have noted that alcohol-related mortality and suicides also increased since the late 1990s. 14,15 Recognition of these shared trends inspired the term "deaths of despair" 16-18 to refer to the cluster of suicides and alcohol-related and drug-related mortality. Other evidence suggests that midlife Americans in particular are afflicted with rising mortality across a variety of causes. Among those aged 25-64, mortality rates increased between 1999 and 2016, not only for external causes, but also digestive diseases, endocrine/nutritional/metabolic disorders, and diseases of the nervous system. 19 These disturbing trends have led scholars to speculate that the US mortality crisis stems from a deeper malaise: a rising tide of despair, 20-22 particularly among less-educated, middle-aged Americans. 14,15 Case and Deaton 14 hypothesized that changes in labor market opportunities have triggered growing distress. Job prospects for less-educated Americans have steadily deteriorated since the early 1970s. 14,15,22 Socioeconomically disadvantaged Americans also

The Association Between Adolescent Residential Mobility and Adult Social Anxiety, BDNF and Amygdala-Orbitofrontal Functional Connectivity in Young Adults With Higher Education

“…Previous studies have reported an association between high residential mobility and the development of alcohol and other drug-related problems among adolescents and young adults (28). We did not find such an association, possibly because high educational attainment and economic security in our study subjects provided protective factors against substance abuse (29).…”

Opioids and the Labor Market

“…Other research discounts the purely economic motivations for opioid abuse. Glei and Weinstein (2019) observe that drug abuse may be related to perceived economic distress that is not captured by headline statistics. Ruhm (2019) finds that drug death rates increased more in places experiencing relative economic decline than in places with more robust economic growth, but he attributes this weak relationship to confounding factors related to the demographic composition of places.…”

Income, Relative Deprivation and the Self-Rated Health of Older People in Urban and Rural China

“…Previous studies which empirically tested the relative deprivation hypothesis have been presented the negative impacts of relative deprivation on various health outcomes. These negative effects are manifested in the increased prevalence of chronic diseases ( 17 , 18 ), stress-related health behavior, such as smoking and drug abuse ( 19 , 20 ) and poor self-rated health ( 21 ), functional disability ( 22 ) and mortality ( 23 ). However, the research results diverged, when considering different health outcomes.…”