The Role of Manufacturing Decline in Drug Overdose Deaths in the US

• In Event: 4255 - Section on Economic Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 8. Market Dynamics

Abstract

Do declines in manufacturing jobs and earnings explain the rise of drug overdose deaths in the U.S.? This study evaluates the extent to which large, ongoing structural changes in state labor markets over the past two decades are associated with the U.S. opioid epidemic. Using an annual dataset that spans the years 1999-2017, I estimate two-way, state-level fixed effects regression equations to predict age-adjusted rates of all-cause and drug overdose deaths. I additionally estimate equations predicting age-adjusted rates of deaths involving heroin, natural and semisynthetic opioids, and synthetic opioids other than methadone. Manufacturing decline, measured either as the share of manufacturing jobs in a state labor market or as the concentration of annual payroll in manufacturing industries, accounts for 19% to 21% of all additional overdose deaths for men and 9.4% to 17.8% percent of all overdose deaths for women between the start and end of this 19-year period. For non-Hispanic white males between the ages of 45-54, manufacturing decline predicts 25.8% to 32% of the increase in overdose deaths between 1999-2017. Furthermore, the results indicate that the association between manufacturing decline and drug deaths for males is driven in large part by deaths involving prescription opioids rather than by deaths involving fentanyls. This analysis emphasizes the importance of understanding the role of upstream social and economic factors when addressing the ongoing opioid epidemic in the U.S.

Author

• Nathan Seltzer, University of Wisconsin-Madison