Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 May 23:8:100409.
doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100409. eCollection 2019 Aug.

Free trade and opioid overdose death in the United States

Adam Dean  1 , Simeon Kimmel  2
Affiliations

Free trade and opioid overdose death in the United States

Adam Dean et al. SSM Popul Health. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. rose dramatically after 1999, but also exhibited substantial geographic variation. This has largely been explained by differential availability of prescription and non-prescription opioids, including heroin and fentanyl. Recent studies explore the underlying role of socioeconomic factors, but overlook the influence of job loss due to international trade, an economic phenomenon that disproportionately harms the same regions and demographic groups at the heart of the opioid epidemic. We used OLS regression and county-year level data from the Centers for Disease Controls and the Department of Labor to test the association between trade-related job loss and opioid-related overdose death between 1999 and 2015. We find that the loss of 1000 trade-related jobs was associated with a 2.7 percent increase in opioid-related deaths. When fentanyl was present in the heroin supply, the same number of job losses was associated with a 11.3 percent increase in opioid-related deaths.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The growth and spread of the opioid epidemic.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Trade-Related Job Losses (per 10,000 Population) 1999–2015.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The opioid epidemic and trade shocks.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Achen Christopher H. University of Michigan; Mimeo: 2000. Why lagged dependent variables can suppress the explanatory power of other independent variables.
    1. Ahmad F.B., LM Rossen MR Spencer, Warner M., Sutton P. National Center for Health Statistics; 2016. Provisional drug overdose death counts.
    1. Autor David H., Dorn David. The growth of low-skill service jobs and the polarization of the US labor market. The American Economic Review. 2013;103(5):1553–1597.
    1. Autor David, Dorn David, Hanson Gordon H. The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the US. The American Economic Review. 2013;103(6):2121–2168.
    1. Autor David H., Dorn David, Hanson Gordon H. The china shock: Learning from labor market adjustment to large changes in trade. Annual Review of Economics. 2016;8(1):205–240.

LinkOut - more resources