Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Demography. 2021 Feb 1;58(1):345-378. doi: 10.1215/00703370-8937348.
The United States has experienced a dramatic rise in opioid addiction and opioid overdose deaths in recent years. We investigate the effect of the opioid epidemic at the local level on nonmarital fertility using aggregate- and individual-level analyses. Opioid overdose death rates and prescriptions per capita are used as indicators of the intensity of the opioid epidemic. We estimate area fixed-effects models to test the effect of the opioid epidemic on nonmarital birth rates obtained from vital statistics for 2000-2016. We find an increase in nonmarital birth rates in communities that experienced a rise in opioid overdose deaths and higher prescription rates. Our analyses also show that the local effect of the opioid epidemic is not driven by a reduction in marriage rates and that marital birth rates are unaffected. Individual-level data from the ACS 2008-2016 are then used to further assess the potential causal mechanisms and to test heterogeneous effects by education and race/ethnicity. Our findings suggest that the opioid epidemic increased nonmarital birth rates through social disruptions primarily affecting unmarried women but not through changes in their economic condition.
近年来，美国阿片类药物成瘾和阿片类药物过量死亡人数急剧上升。我们利用总体和个人层面的分析，研究了阿片类药物泛滥在地方层面上对非婚生育的影响。阿片类药物过量死亡率和人均处方数被用作阿片类药物流行强度的指标。我们使用区域固定效应模型来检验 2000-2016 年生命统计数据中获得的非婚出生率受阿片类药物流行的影响。我们发现，在经历阿片类药物过量死亡和更高处方率上升的社区，非婚出生率有所上升。我们的分析还表明，阿片类药物泛滥的地方效应不是由结婚率下降驱动的，而婚内出生率不受影响。然后，我们使用 2008-2016 年 ACS 的个人层面数据，进一步评估潜在的因果机制，并按教育程度和种族/族裔检验异质效应。我们的研究结果表明，阿片类药物泛滥通过主要影响未婚女性的社会混乱而非通过改变她们的经济状况来增加非婚出生率。
