Abstract
Drug overdose deaths, primarily due to opioid addiction, have devastated communities in almost every area of the U.S. The economic impacts of the crisis include additional healthcare resources, unemployment, lost productivity, criminal justice costs, and other indirect impacts that have not yet been researched. This study aims to estimate one potential impact of opioid dependency in communities by estimating the relationship between drug overdose deaths and entrepreneurship. In particular, the empirical models measure how entrepreneurship, as measured by the percentage of self-employed workers, changes in relation to the number of overdose deaths in all U.S. counties, controlling for a number of socioeconomic characteristics. The results suggest that overdose deaths are associated with significant declines in self-employment rates. The coefficients on overdose death rates are generally larger in magnitude for rural counties than for larger metro counties.
Highlights
IntroductionAmericans were addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers such as morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone, and approximately 650,000 were addicted to heroin or illicitly made synthetic drugs fentanyl in 2017
The U.S has never faced an addiction crisis as destructive as the current opioid epidemic.The Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (2018) estimates that approximately 1.7 millionAmericans were addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers such as morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone, and approximately 650,000 were addicted to heroin or illicitly made synthetic drugs fentanyl in 2017
Over the past two decades, the opioid crisis has devastated millions of families and thousands of communities across the U.S, yet few academic studies to date have attempted to measure the potential economic impacts that the opioid crisis has had on communities
Summary
Americans were addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers such as morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone, and approximately 650,000 were addicted to heroin or illicitly made synthetic drugs fentanyl in 2017. More Americans died from overdoses involving opioids than the total number of deaths from gun violence, HIV/AIDS, or automobile accidents. The number of overdose deaths involving opioids has increased at a staggering rate over the past two decades, from 8048 in 1999 to 47,600 in 2017 (Hedegaard et al 2018). Recent works have shown opioid usage has a significant adverse impact on labor force participation (Denk 2019), and employment to population and unemployment rates (Harris et al 2019), and the school performance of children (Cotti et al 2019). This research aims to derive a better understanding of the toll opioids have on communities by examining the relationship between overdose deaths and self-employment rates in all U.S counties
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