De-unionization and Drug Death Rates

Abstract

Drug death rates in the United States have risen dramatically in recent years, sparking urgent discussions about causes. Most of these discussions have centered on supply-side issues, such as doctors overprescribing pain killers. However, there is increasing recognition of the need to go beyond proximate causes and to consider larger social forces that bear on the demand for pain-relieving drugs. Informed by sociological research linking labor unions to community health, we empirically examined the relationship between union density and drug death rates for the years 1999 to 2016. We found that states experiencing greater declines in unionization also tended to experience greater increases in drug deaths. Estimates from our fixed-effects models suggested that a one standard deviation decrease in union density was associated with a 42 percent increase in drug death rates over the period. Although the incorporation of a variety of statistical controls reduced this association, it remained negative and significant. Beyond variation in the availability of substances to misuse, our findings underscore the importance of considering institutional decline and broader social conditions as deeply relevant for contemporary drug death trends.