A recent study suggests that the decline in religious participation among middle-aged, less educated white Americans may be connected to the increase in so-called "deaths of despair," which include deaths from drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease. The research found that states experiencing the greatest drops in church attendance between 1985 and 2000 also saw larger increases in these types of deaths.
Tamar Oostrom, assistant professor of economics at The Ohio State University and co-author of the study, explained that while previous discussions have often linked the rise in deaths of despair to new opioids such as OxyContin introduced in the late 1990s, this trend began earlier as fewer people attended church. "OxyContin and the opioid crisis made a bad situation worse, but the deaths of despair were already on the rise," Oostrom said.
The study was conducted by Oostrom along with Tyler Giles from Wellesley College and Daniel Hungerman from the University of Notre Dame. Their findings were published online in the Journal of the European Economic Association. They analyzed data from General Social Surveys on religiosity and mortality statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Their analysis showed that declines in religious participation were primarily seen among white, middle-aged Americans without a college degree—the same demographic facing rising mortality rates. This pattern was observed across both genders and in rural as well as urban settings.
To further explore this relationship, researchers examined what happened after several states repealed so-called "blue laws," which had previously restricted most commercial activity on Sundays. In 1985, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Texas all lifted these restrictions. The researchers compared these states to others without similar changes.
They found that repealing blue laws led to a 5- to 10-percentage-point drop in weekly religious service attendance followed by an increase in deaths of despair rates within those states. According to Oostrom: "Deaths of despair were on a steady decline among middle-aged white Americans from the late 1970s to early 1990s... This leveling off is consistent with effects of repeal of blue laws and declines in religious participation."
After OxyContin became available in 1996, mortality rates increased more sharply.
Oostrom discussed possible reasons for this connection: when people stop attending church they lose important social ties associated with better health outcomes; however, she noted it may go beyond simple social interaction. The study did not find similar declines among other forms of social activity during periods when churchgoing dropped.
"Religion may provide some way of making sense of the world, some sense of identity in relation to others, that can't easily be replaced by other forms of socialization," Oostrom said.
She also pointed out that belief in God did not decrease during this period—what changed was whether individuals identified as religious or attended services regularly: "Those are things that matter when it comes to deaths of despair," she said.
The authors questioned whether renewed participation either through organized religion or secular community groups could help reverse current trends but remained skeptical about such prospects: "To our knowledge, findings on this point have so far been pessimistic," they wrote.
Oostrom added there is no evidence general declines in community involvement are reversing; benefits derived from religious engagement for life satisfaction appear hard to match elsewhere. She suggested modern trends such as increased use of social media might make finding alternatives even more difficult: "People are less religious now, and there hasn't been a substitute that provides what religion provided to many people. And our paper suggests this could have long-term impacts on health and mortality," she said.
