Martins SS, Segura LE, Marziali ME, Bruzelius E, Levy NS, Gutkind S, Santarin K, Sacks K, Fox A. Higher unemployment benefits are associated with reduced drug overdose mortality in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DRUG POLICY 2024;
130:104522. [PMID:
38996642 PMCID:
PMC11347091 DOI:
10.1016/j.drugpo.2024.104522]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2023] [Revised: 06/03/2024] [Accepted: 07/03/2024] [Indexed: 07/14/2024]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES
Overdose mortality rates in the United States remain critical to population health. Economic , such as unemployment, are noted risk factors for drug overdoses. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated economic hardship; as a result, the US government enacted income protection programs in conjunction with existing unemployment insurance (UI) to dampen COVID-19-related economic consequences. We investigate whether UI, operationalized as the weekly benefit allowance (WBA) replacement rate, is negatively associated with drug-related overdoses.
METHODS
Data from the pooled 2014-2020 Detailed Restricted Mortality files for all counties from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, restricted to people ≥18 years of age, aggregated at the county-quarter level (n = 89,914). We included any fatal drug, opioid, and stimulant overdose. We modeled the association between WBA replacement rate (e.g., a greater proportion of weekly earnings replaced by UI) on each county-level age-adjusted mortality outcome using separate linear regression models during 2014-2020, pre-COVID (2014-2018), and post-COVID (2019-2020). We conducted sensitivity analyses using multi-level linear regression models.
RESULTS
Results indicated that a more robust WBA replacement rate any drug (Risk Difference [RD]: -0.06, 95 % Confidence Interval [CI]: -0.08, -0.05), opioid (RD: -0.04, 95 % CI: -0.06, -0.03), and stimulant (RD: -0.03, 95 % CI: -0.04, -0.02) across the entire study period (2014-2020). A more robust WBA replacement rate was associated with fewer fatal drug, opioid and stimulant overdoses in the pre-COVID-19 period and on fatal any drug and stimulant overdoses in the COVID-19 period.
CONCLUSIONS
Findings support the notion that income protection policies, such as robust UI, can have a supportive role in preventing fatal drug overdoses, calling for a broader discussion onthe role of the safety net programs to buffer drug-related harms.
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