ArticleDrug and alcohol dependence2024
Drug overdose mortality rates by educational attainment and sex for adults aged 25-64 in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2015-2021.
Article in Drug and alcohol dependence, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Higher drug overdose mortality among non-hispanic black adults aged 55 and older in the U.S.: Analysis of national death records from CDC's WONDER database (1999-2023).Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2026Article
- Substance use and treatment utilization patterns of working-age American men who were not in employment, education, or training (NEET) during the COVID-19 pandemic.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2026Article
- Spatial-Structural Mechanisms of Racialized Disparities in Overdose Mortality: A Spatiotemporal Analysis.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Substance use and treatment utilization patterns of working-age American men who were not in employment, education, or training (NEET) during the COVID-19 pandemic.Research square · 2026Article
- Substance use and treatment utilization patterns of working-age American men who were not in employment, education, or training (NEET) during the COVID-19 pandemic.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Extreme vulnerability to overdose mortality: Intersections of detailed race/ethnicity, educational attainment, age, sex, and nativity.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2025Article
- Understanding the demographics of the opioid overdose death crisis.Journal of population economics · 2025Article
- Understanding and Addressing Widening Racial Inequalities in Drug Overdose.The American journal of psychiatry · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
introductionDramatic increases in U.S. drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl, beginning around 2014 have driven a marked progression in overall drug overdose deaths in the U.S., which sharply rose to unprecedented levels amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Disparities in drug overdose deaths by educational attainment (EA) during the fentanyl era of the drug overdose epidemic and its intersection with the COVID-19 pandemic have not been widely scrutinized.
methodsUtilizing restricted-use mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System and population estimates from the American Community Survey, we estimated annual national age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMRs) from drug overdoses jointly stratified by EA and sex for adults aged 25-64 from 2015 to 2021. State-level AAMRs in 2015 and 2021 were also estimated to examine the geographic variation in the cumulative evolution of EA-related disparities over the course of the analysis period.
resultsNationally, AAMRs rose fastest among persons with at most a high school-level education, whereas little to no change was observed for bachelor's degree holders, widening pre-existing disparities. During the analysis period, the difference in national AAMRs between persons with at most a high school-level education and bachelor's degree holders increased from less than 8-fold (2015) to approximately 13-fold (2021). The national widening of EA-related disparities accelerated amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and they widened in nearly every state. Among non-bachelor's degree holders, national AAMRs increased markedly faster for males.
conclusionsThe widening disparities in drug overdose deaths by EA are a likely indicator of a rapidly increasing socioeconomic divide in drug overdose mortality more broadly. Policy strategies should address upstream socioeconomic drivers of drug use and overdose, particularly among males.
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