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
. 2023 Apr:160:101-109.
doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.02.010. Epub 2023 Feb 8.

Associations between relative deprivation with opioid use among working-age adults during the great recession

Sarah Gutkind  1 , Melanie S Askari  2 , Alexander S Perlmutter  3 , Elizabeth D Nesoff  4 , Pia M Mauro  5 , Silvia S Martins  6
Affiliations

Associations between relative deprivation with opioid use among working-age adults during the great recession

Sarah Gutkind et al. J Psychiatr Res. 2023 Apr.

Abstract

Recessions, poverty, and unemployment have been associated with opioid use. However, these measures of financial hardship may be imprecise, limiting our ability to understand this relationship. We tested associations between relative deprivation and non-medical prescription opioid use (NMPOU) and heroin use among working-age adults (ages 18-64) during the Great Recession. Our sample included working-age adults in the 2005-2013 United States National Survey of Drug Use and Health (n = 320,186). Relative deprivation compared the lowest limit of participants' income category to the national 25th percentile individual income for people with similar socio-demographic characteristics (race and ethnicity, gender, year). We distinguished the period before (1/2005-11/2007), during (12/2007-06/2009), and after (07/2007-12/2013) the Great Recession. We estimated odds of past-year NMPOU and heroin use for each past-year exposure (i.e., relative deprivation, poverty, unemployment) using separate logistic regressions adjusting for individual-level covariates (gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, and education) and national-level annual Gini coefficient. Our results show that NMPOU was higher among people experiencing relative deprivation (aOR = 1.13, 95% CI = 1.06-1.20), poverty (aOR = 1.22, 95% CI = 1.16-1.29), and unemployment (aOR = 1.42, 95% CI = 1.32-1.53) between 2005 and 2013, as was heroin use (aORs = 2.54, 2.09, 3.55, respectively). The association between relative deprivation and NMPOU was modified by recession timing, and was significantly higher after the Recession (aOR = 1.21, 95% CI = 1.11-1.33). Relative deprivation was associated with higher odds of NMPOU and heroin use, and higher odds of NMPOU after the Great Recession. Our findings suggest contextual-level factors may modify the relationship between relative deprivation and opioid use, and support the need for new measures of financial hardship.

Keywords: Great recession; Heroin; Non-medical opioid use; Poverty.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

References

    1. Ahmad F, Rossen L, Sutton P, 2021. Provisional drug overdose death counts, Vital Statistics Rapid Release. National Center for Health Statistics
    1. American Psychological Association, 2022. Stress in America March 2022 Survey Report. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2022/march-2022-survival-.... (Accessed May 6 2022).
    1. Aneshensel CS, 1992. Social stress: Theory and research. Annual review of sociology 18(1), 15–38.
    1. Azagba S, Shan L, Qeadan F, Wolfson M, 2021. Unemployment rate, opioids misuse and other substance abuse: quasi-experimental evidence from treatment admissions data. BMC psychiatry 21(1), 1–9. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baptiste-Roberts K, Hossain M, 2018. Socioeconomic disparities and self-reported substance abuse-related problems. Addiction & health 10(2), 112. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types