How Job Loss Can Lead to Drug Use [TheAtlantic.com]
In 2013, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Nevada had some of the highest rates of death from opioid overdoses, and they also had some of the country’s highest unemployment rates . A series of studies suggests that this joblessness might have been—at least in part—contributing to the high rates of drug addiction. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper I wrote about a few months ago found that as the unemployment rate increases by 1 percentage point in a given county, the opioid-death rate...