Natali, Ilaria, Dewatripont, Mathias, Ginsburgh, Victor, Goldman, Michel and Legros, Patrick (2022) Prescription Opioids and Economic Hardship in France. TSE Working Paper, n. 22-1388, Toulouse

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Abstract

This paper studies how opioid analgesic sales are empirically related to socioeconomic disparities in France, with a focus on poverty. This analysis is made possible using the OpenHealth database, which provides retail sales data for opioid analgesics available on the
French market. We exploit firm-level data for each of the 94 departments in Metropolitan France between 2008 and 2017. We show that increases in the poverty rate are associated with increases in sales: a one percentage point increase in poverty is associated with approximately a five percent increase in mild opioid sales. Our analysis further shows that opioid sales are positively related to the share of middle-aged people and individuals with basic education only, while they are negatively related to population density. The granularity and longitudinal nature of these data allow us to control for a large pool of potential confounding factors. Our results suggest that additional interventions should be more intensively addressed towards the most deprived areas. We conclude that a combination of policies aimed at improving economic prospects and strictly monitoring access to opioid medications would be beneficial for reducing opioid-related harm.

Item Type: Monograph (Working Paper)
Language: English
Date: December 2022
Place of Publication: Toulouse
Subjects: B- ECONOMIE ET FINANCE
Divisions: TSE-R (Toulouse)
Institution: Université Toulouse 1 Capitole
Site: UT1
Date Deposited: 07 Dec 2022 08:08
Last Modified: 14 Dec 2022 08:01
OAI Identifier: oai:tse-fr.eu:127557
URI: https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/46492
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