Substance Abuse during the Pandemic: Implications for Labor-Force Participation

Karen Kopecky, Jeremy Greenwood and Nezih Guner

No 1335, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: The labor-force participation rates of prime-age U.S. workers dropped in March 2020—the start of the COVID-19 pandemic—and have still not fully recovered. Could increased substance abuse during the pandemic be an important contributing factor? Substance-abuse deaths were elevated during the pandemic relative to trend indicating an increase in the number of substance abusers, and abusers of opioids and crystal methamphetamine have lower labor-force participation rates than non-abusers. A range of estimates of the number of additional substance abusers during the pandemic indicate that increased substance abuse can account for 9 to 30 percent of the decline in prime-age labor force participation between February 2020 and June 2021.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; substance abuse; labor-force participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J11 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Substance Abuse during the Pandemic: Implications for Labor-Force Participation (2022)
Working Paper: Substance Abuse during the Pandemic: Implications for Labor-Force Participation (2022)
Working Paper: Substance Abuse during the Pandemic: Implications for Labor-Force Participation (2022)
Working Paper: Substance Abuse during the Pandemic: Implications for Labor-Force Participation (2022)
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