Greenwood, Jeremy. <br/><br/>
Substance Abuse during the Pandemic:  Implications for Labor-Force Participation / 
Jeremy Greenwood, Nezih Guner, Karen Kopecky. 
 - Cambridge, Mass.  National Bureau of Economic Research  2022. 
 - 1 online resource:  illustrations (black and white); 
 - NBER working paper series  no. w29932 .
 - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)  no. w29932. .
<br/><br/> April 2022. 
<br/><br/> The labor-force participation rates of prime-age U.S. workers dropped in March 2020--the start of the COVID-19 pandemic--and have still not fully recovered.  At the same time,  substance-abuse deaths were elevated during the pandemic relative to trend indicating an increase in the number of substance abusers, and abusers of opioids and crystal methamphetamine have lower labor-force participation rates than non-abusers.  Could increased substance abuse during the pandemic be a factor contributing to the fall in labor-force participation? Estimates of the number of additional substance abusers during the pandemic presented here suggest that increased substance abuse accounts for between 9 and 26 percent of the decline in prime-age labor-force participation between February 2020 and June 2021. 
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