Unemployment Insurance and Opioid Overdose Mortality in the United States

Over the past two decades, opioid overdose deaths contributed to the dramatic rise in all-cause mortality among non-Hispanic Whites. To date, efforts among scholars to understand the role of local area labor market conditions on opioid overdose mortality have led to mixed results. We argue the reason for these disparate findings is scholars have not considered the moderating effects of income support policies such as unemployment insurance. The present study leverages two sources of variation-county mass layoffs and changes in the generosity of state unemployment insurance benefits-to investigate if unemployment benefits moderate the relationship between job loss and county opioid overdose death rates. Our difference-in-differences estimation strategy reveals that the harmful effects of job loss on opioid overdose mortality decline with increasing state unemployment insurance benefit levels. These findings suggest that social policy in the form of income transfers played a crucial role in disrupting the link between job loss and opioid overdose mortality.