The intergenerational persistence of opioid dependence: Evidence from administrative data

To address the opioid crisis, it is crucial to understand its origins. We provide descriptive evidence for the intergenerational persistence of opioid dependence. Our analysis is based on administrative data covering the universe of Austrian births from 1984 to 1990. We consider prescription opioids...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health economics 2022-11, Vol.31 (11), p.2425-2444
Main Authors: Ahammer, Alexander, Halla, Martin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
addiction
Addictions
Analgesics, Opioid
Austria - epidemiology
Behavior, Addictive
Births
Child
drug abuse
Family
Health economics
heroin
Humans
illicit opioids
intergenerational correlation
intergenerational transmission
Narcotics
Opioid-Related Disorders - epidemiology
Opioids
prescription opioids
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Summary:To address the opioid crisis, it is crucial to understand its origins. We provide descriptive evidence for the intergenerational persistence of opioid dependence. Our analysis is based on administrative data covering the universe of Austrian births from 1984 to 1990. We consider prescription opioids and a new proxy for addiction to illicit opioids. We find that, if at least one parent is using illicit opioids, the likelihood of the child using increases from 1% to 7%. For prescription opioids, we observe an increase from 3.6% to 6.7%. Both associations are stable and do not change when controlling for environmental variables.
ISSN:1057-9230
1099-1050
DOI:10.1002/hec.4589