Demographic Divergence: The Legacy of the Opioid Epidemic

Carolina Arteaga, Victoria Barone () and Stephen Claassen

No 35340, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study how the opioid epidemic shaped local population dynamics in the United States. Exploiting variation in exposure that stems from Purdue Pharma's targeted marketing of OxyContin to high-cancer-mortality areas, we find that more exposed commuting zones experienced lower population growth. By 2020, a one-standard-deviation increase in exposure reduced population growth among individuals aged 18 to 64 by 2.4 percentage points. Direct mortality from drug-induced deaths made only a limited contribution to these changes. Instead, population losses were primarily driven by migratory responses: exposure increased out-migration rates, especially among college-educated individuals. These responses are consistent with the opioid epidemic operating as a disamenity shock, deteriorating local quality of life. Working in the opposite direction, we also document a rise in fertility rates that, by 2020, partially counteracts these population losses. Our findings show that the opioid epidemic reshaped local demographic composition and contributed to the long-run divergence in population dynamics across U.S. commuting zones.

JEL-codes: I1 I3 J13 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
Note: EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35340.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35340

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35340
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().