Dow, William H. <br/><br/>
Can Economic Policies Reduce Deaths of Despair? / 
William H. Dow, Anna Godøy, Christopher A. Lowenstein, Michael Reich. 
 - Cambridge, Mass.  National Bureau of Economic Research  2019. 
 - 1 online resource:  illustrations (black and white); 
 - NBER working paper series  no. w25787 .
 - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)  no. w25787. .
<br/><br/> April 2019. 
<br/><br/> Do minimum wages and the EITC mitigate rising "deaths of despair?" We leverage state variation in these policies over time to estimate event study and difference-in-differences models of deaths due to drug overdose, suicide, and alcohol-related causes. Our causal models find no significant effects on drug or alcohol-related mortality, but do find significant reductions in non-drug suicides. A 10 percent minimum wage increase reduces non-drug suicides among low-educated adults by 2.7 percent; the comparable EITC figure is 3.0 percent. Placebo tests and event-study models support our causal research design. Increasing both policies by 10 percent would likely prevent a combined total of more than 700 suicides each year. 
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