Jessica Ho - "What Explains the Rise of Drug Overdose Deaths? Differential Vulnerability Across U.S. Counties"

Over the past two decades, deaths from drug overdose more than quintupled in the United States. The current epidemic involves more users and deaths than the heroin and crack epidemics of the 1970s and 1990s, and is largely driven by prescription opioid painkillers. This study seeks to identify the underlying factors contributing to differential vulnerability to the drug overdose epidemic across counties. I examine whether demographic, socioeconomic, labor force/industrial conditions, public assistance, and income inequality are related to county-level drug overdose death rates in 1999-2010. The findings illustrate Appalachia's sustained disadvantage and the shifting geographic and urban/rural contours of the epidemic, and the importance of unemployment, mining-dependency, public assistance, and income inequality in patterning drug overdose mortality over this period #4840