Prescription Opioids and Economic Hardship in France

Ilaria Natali, Mathias Dewatripont (), Victor Ginsburgh, Michel Goldman and Patrick Legros ()
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Ilaria Natali: ECARES - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics - ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles, TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Mathias Dewatripont: ECARES - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics - ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
Victor Ginsburgh: ECARES - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics - ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
Michel Goldman: ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
Patrick Legros: ECARES - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics - ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles

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Abstract: This paper studies how opioid analgesic sales are empirically related to socioeconomic disparities in France, with a focus on poverty. This analysis is made possible using the OpenHealth database, which provides retail sales data for opioid analgesics available on the French market. We exploit firm-level data for each of the 94 departments in Metropolitan France between 2008 and 2017. We show that increases in the poverty rate are associated with increases in sales: a one percentage point increase in poverty is associated with approximately a five percent increase in mild opioid sales. Our analysis further shows that opioid sales are positively related to the share of middle-aged people and individuals with basic education only, while they are negatively related to population density. The granularity and longitudinal nature of these data allow us to control for a large pool of potential confounding factors. Our results suggest that additional interventions should be more intensively addressed towards the most deprived areas. We conclude that a combination of policies aimed at improving economic prospects and strictly monitoring access to opioid medications would be beneficial for reducing opioid-related harm.

Keywords: Prescription opioids; Socioeconomic conditions; France; Opioid crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-12-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04958214v1
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