# Employment Insecurity and Substance Use in U.S. Adults

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA · 2024 · $373,485

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Employment insecurity (EI; unemployment or underemployment) may escalate substance use as a maladaptive
coping mechanism for distress. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a rapid surge in EI for millions of Americans,
hitting racial and ethnic minority and low socioeconomic status workers harder. The long-term impacts of the
recent surge in EI on substance use are unknown. Employment recovery has been observed, but the speed has
varied across subgroups and regional areas and future economic volatility looms. Despite robust cross-sectional
associations of EI with substance use, prior studies have produced mixed results regarding the prospective effect
of EI on substance use, its causal nature, and its differential impacts across racial and ethnic minority and low-
SES workers. Moreover, the science base is unclear regarding which person-level factors are critical to address
in interventions and how context-level factors intersect with person-level factors to buffer or amplify the impact
of EI on substance use. National drug use surveys typically follow an annual or longer survey schedule that is
not temporally granular enough to address these critical questions, leaving public officials without critical
information to establish sound policies and practices related to EI as a means to reduce substance use.
The proposed secondary data analysis study will address this challenge by isolating transitions in employment
status (including underemployment) to elucidate the time course of effects (i.e., timing, duration, and trajectory
of EI) on substance use. The study also will examine a targeted set of systemic environmental and individual
factors that moderate the effects of EI on substance use and the mechanisms through which it affects substance
use. We will anchor the inquiry in a novel conceptual model that synthesizes behavioral economic models of
substance use with an ecological perspective. The model hypothesizes that people are motivated to engage in
rewarding activities, and when critical sources that can bring rewards, such as full-time employment, are taken
away, a cascading risk process is triggered, involving loss of financial and nonfinancial rewards, distress, mental
health, and increased substance use. Environmental stressors and resources in the neighborhood may amplify
or mitigate these forces. We will leverage the Understanding America Study (UAS), a nationally representative
panel of 9,000-plus individuals. UAS involves high-frequency (biweekly from March 2020 to March 2021 and
monthly thereafter until June 2022; 39 waves; 237,849 total observations) assessment of EI, substance use,
financial and nonfinancial rewards, distress, and mental health. We will augment these intensive longitudinal
data with neighborhood context data. The recent rapid surge in EI, its unknown long-term impacts on substance
use, economic uncertainty, decades-long but unresolved debates regarding the causal nature of the EI–
substance use link, and...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10985986
- **Project number:** 1R01DA061309-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Jungeun Olivia Lee
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $373,485
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-07-15 → 2028-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10985986

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10985986, Employment Insecurity and Substance Use in U.S. Adults (1R01DA061309-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10985986. Licensed CC0.

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