The Drug Crisis and the Living Arrangements of Children

We examine the impact of the US drug crisis on children's living arrangements. Because factors that lead to drug use could also alter family structure, we instrument for the intensity of the drug crisis with cross-state exposure to marketing of the prescription opioid at the epicenter of the crisis. We find that the crisis increased the likelihood that a child lives away from a parent or in a household headed by a grandparent. Our results suggest that if drug use had remained at 1996 levels, 1.5 million fewer children aged 0–16 would have lived away from a parent in 2015.