Aug. 4, 2026
Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion: What the Data Actually Shows — with Dr. Tamar Oostrom
What does repealing Sunday shopping laws have to do with rising rates of suicide, alcohol deaths, and drug overdoses? More than you might expect. In this episode of Thinking Christian, I sit down with Dr. Tamar Oostrom, health economist at The Ohio State University, to walk through her research on blue laws, religious decline, and what the data reveals about the hidden costs of losing community.
The paper's central finding is striking: states that repealed blue laws — the Sunday retail restrictions that once made church the default social gathering of the week — saw measurable increases in deaths of despair in the years that followed. States that kept those laws did not. The mechanism isn't as simple as more alcohol access. It's something harder to quantify: the erosion of identity, purpose, and the kind of social accountability that comes with belonging to a local religious community.
We talk through what economists actually study, why unintended consequences are so hard to see in real time, and why re-instituting blue laws isn't the answer even if the data is compelling. The more useful question is what individuals, employers, and communities can do now to rebuild the connective tissue that those laws once quietly enforced.
The conversation also touches on remote work, social media, and the broader collapse of in-person socialization — and what all of it might mean for where deaths of despair go from here.
Find more from Tamar Oostrom at https://www.tamaroostrom.com
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
📢 Stay Connected & Keep Growing!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian so you never miss an insightful conversation!
Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.
Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.
00:00:28
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode Thinking Christian.
00:00:30
Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer and I am joined today by doctor Tamar Ostrom.
00:00:35
Speaker 2: She is an assistant.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: Professor at the Ohio State University and one of the authors on a paper that's called Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion. And so while that may sound like a really upbeat topic, we're going to be talking about her research a bit and just trying to understand what the implications of certain blue laws are for this discos ession.
00:01:00
Speaker 2: So I really appreciate you being on the show tomorrow. Welcome.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: Thanks for reading my paper. Someone does.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: It feels good, doesn't it? So why don't we start here?
00:01:15
Speaker 1: Why don't you give us just kind of an overview of what the paper's about and just that broad summary, and then we'll dig into some of the points.
00:01:24
Speaker 3: Okay, So we were interested in this question of to what extent has religiosity affected this increase in what some people call death despair deaths due to a suicide, alcohol overdoses, and drug overdoses. So the broad picture is basically, does religion, community ties things like that, does that affect health? And so what evidence can we can we bring to that topic?
00:01:58
Speaker 2: Is it in the vein? So?
00:01:59
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read the paper and some of the things that sort of echoed for me were bowling alone, you know, the sort of idea that as the culture's institutions tend to decline a little bit and crumble a little bit, that you start to lose the sense of meaning and self and identity and then these things are more likely. Is that a Is that the way you're arguing or is there something more complex about it?
00:02:24
Speaker 3: I think I think that's like the hypothesis that we're considering. You know, like a lot of people have speculated that like your connections matter for your happiness, for your life expectancy, and this is sort of one way of testing that in here, Okay.
00:02:42
Speaker 1: And maybe one other question before we dive into the article. Economics. So I've read Daniel Kammons stuff, and I know he was an economist, but I really don't know what that means. So can you talk about your feel a little bit your background and just give people a context for why this topic would arise out of economics.
00:03:00
Speaker 3: An economics paper? Why is why part of my description? Yeah, that's a great question. So economics is so much broader than I thought it was when I took like equal one to one and had some supplying to Maan curves and was like, honestly, this is very boring, which I didn't realize until much, you know, many years after that. So economics is just like the study of like scarce resources, which is like anything. So we as economists have interpreted that super broadly to apply to things like I'm a health economist, so I study things like incentives and pharmaceutical innovation, thinking about sort of you know, drivers of these, like opioid overdoses. I have other things on, like, you know, why do people get mammograms. It's just anything that's like people making decisions under constraints, which there's always constraints in the real world. It's economics, and we've become quite imperialistic kind of and like the sorts of topics that economists study. I think the one thing that ties these papers together is sort of the way economists think about these problems and like the toolkits that we use.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in this paper, just from my reading of it and based on that description of economics, it's actually really helpful. So it feels like the constraint that's lifted off or what you call these blue laws, and once those constraints are lifted off, then people are free, free or maybe to make other choices. And these other choices have implications down the road that aren't immediately obvious, but that now ultimately sort of grow out of a meta analysis of all this research, and you can see a trend there is.
00:05:00
Speaker 2: Is that the right way to think of it?
00:05:02
Speaker 3: That's that's that's that's a great way of thinking about it. Basically, like the broader question is sort of like why have there been all of these? That's a despair? You know, what decisions are people making? So of what what are there like like economic and environmental like constraints? And then this paper is like thinking about, yes, like what if we change you know, the uh in this case, like people's tendency to go to church? Yes, what consequences does.
00:05:38
Speaker 1: That and what consequences that have? So talk a little bit about the blue laws. I've referenced a few times, but I thought that was a really interesting part of the paper. And then I've got some follow up questions just to clarify in my own mind.
00:05:52
Speaker 2: Maybe what's associated with blue laws.
00:05:54
Speaker 1: But go ahead and describe what the blue law is and kind of help people understand how that interact your study.
00:06:00
Speaker 3: Yes, so blue laws are just general prohibitions on retail activity, usually on Sundays. So this idea is that like the grocery store used to be closed on Sundays. I'm Dutch, still, like in Holland and many European countries you can't buy like milk or anything on Sundays. So that sort of just like laws, we're regulating commerce on certain days of the week, usually for sort of religious reasons. So why you might sort of not be familiar with this term is that, like currently most states don't have these restrictions. So in the nineteen sixties and seventies, almost all states had some version of these laws, and then over the time period that we study, sort of in like the the seventies and eighties into the nineties, most states repeal these laws. So then you could go shopping on Sunday. You could do something, you know, arguably more fun than going to church. These considints are lifted.
00:07:08
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, because I mean, I think I can remember times when I was younger.
00:07:14
Speaker 2: So I was born in seventy seven.
00:07:15
Speaker 3: Perfect for the study. Amazing firsthands.
00:07:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I got older and I could shop, I can still remember going to the store and seeing people not be able to buy alcohol. I wasn't old enough to buy alcohol at the time, but you could go to the store. But then there were certain even within those stores, there were restrictions, like you couldn't buy alcohol before noon. Let's say, Okay, I can remember those royals being there, so yeah, go ahead, Okay.
00:07:38
Speaker 3: So I do want to make a distinction that there's sort of two types of laws. There's laws on like can the store be open, and there's laws on like can alcohol be sold? Okay, the laws that we study are can the stores be open? So not directly about alcohol, and actually a lot of states still have alcohol laws in the books. I went to like brad School of Massachusetts, where you couldn't buy alcohol I think before sometime on Sunday, which you know, was not a part of my life until suddenly I'd be like, oh no, do it five minutes to buy the line? Yes, So we are not directly studying changes in these alcohol laws, okay, and usually there's sort of there's sort of separate laws on the books for those two days.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. So that was one of my questions, like, how how were those connected? So I'm glad we got through that. Then my next question then is how I'm like the connection between just being able to go shop, moving away from church, and then having this increase in deaths of despair becomes really harder for me to conceptualize because you know, you can almost draw a straight line conceptually without looking at any data. You could go, well, yeah, people now could buy alcohol on Sundays, and so obviously there's going to be more of this or there's going to be more of that. But if it's just the stores being opened and you can buy whatever it is that you'd like, and all you're doing is staying away from church, it's it's a more complex situation to understand why these other deaths are happening. So how talk about how you navigate that in the study?
00:09:21
Speaker 3: What's what's going on? So the first thing is that some other papers have looked at these lot changes and found, like we do that when you sort of give people more opportunities to do other things on Sunday, they do they like go shopping, they like do other things, and then this reduces church attendance and like affiliation. So what people are sort of less likely to go, say weekly, and they're also more likely to report they have sort of like a weak affiliation with the church. This is changing like behavior and like a little part of this is like also some part of the identity or like do you see yourself as someone who regularly attends church? Is that a important part of how you would describe yourself? And so then the question is like what what sort of the downstream consequences of like that be and why why would that effect uh death to spare down the road and like yeah, that's like what we see. So the actually I haven't actually quite gotten into like what what the identification is in the paper. Basically different states repeopled these laws at different times, and you can see after states repealed the laws that a couple of years later, deaths due to these sort of deaths of despair increase in those dates, and then they don't increase in those states where like these laws didn't change. H So.
00:11:04
Speaker 1: You know, so you'd use the states that where the laws didn't change. Is almost like a control group. Yes, and then as you saw a difference between the states that released those laws got rid of them, then you're able to see significant differences between deaths of despair and a state that still had the laws versus death of despair that didn't have the laws.
00:11:24
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, so it's like a treatment verse control straight. And then also like the timing of those lat changes, like we should see effects earlier for the states there earlier and later for the others. Yeah, and we shouldn't see differences between those states before the law changed right as well?
00:11:39
Speaker 2: Right?
00:11:40
Speaker 3: Yes, interesting, But I guess to sort of go back to like, you know, why is this happening? I think this is something where like the papers more speculative on, so we looked at like social connections, like were those changing? Were you sort of more less likely socialize with your friends and relatives that didn't seem to change as much. We did see sort of increases in not in like safe drinking, like did you go to the bar with your friends? Did you like occasionally drink? But we did see increases in like self reported like unsafe drinking, did you like drink more than you should? And things like that. So potentially this is a story about you know, purpose and like identity and like something like that or just you know this. For many Americans, this is one of the most frequent sort of social interactions. You have sort of like the large part of your community. And if suddenly, like your friends stops showing up or sort of you stop showing up, potentially that would have sort of long term consequences.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to think, I mean, and again I don't want to extrapolate too far from your data, but having done some work in this area myself, where you look at the proliferation of choice just generally, and the way that that tends to fragment people and create this ongoing desire for more right, Like we've all heard of fomo right, the fear of missing out right, and so it almost creates this underlying anxiety where I'm not doing what I should be doing or what I could be doing. There's so many other things I could be doing right now and I'm not able to do them or what have you. It just feels like that would tie in somehow, But I don't reading your article. Obviously they weren't like empirical results that would suggest that, But it just feels like that's part of the context that we're creating with some of these things, and that what you guys are showing with these blue law repeals is that without certain restraints, unind choice may not be the best move for all of us.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: I can at least say.
00:14:04
Speaker 3: That that's same. I mean, yeah, there's there's these papers sort of less like specific about this, but I agree with that general concept, like in general, like you know, there's papers that if you like, have the default to be to save more for retirement. You know, people are happy with that ten twenty years later than if you say, you know, free choice, do whatever you'd like. And there's you know, this whole food of economics on like you know, people have your the present cells and their future cells, and they're often in conflict and like sort of you know, maybe the best thing for your future self would be to like invest in your social network and your friendships, but the best thing for your current self is to like you know, stay home today and relax, right, And yeah, so like that you know potentially, like is a dynamic that that's going on in this setting as well? Do you?
00:15:01
Speaker 1: I mean again, you mentioned that people didn't spend less time with their families and friends after these blue laws were taken out, and that there really seemed to be something about being in a local religious community that was holding these other things back.
00:15:24
Speaker 2: Is that a Is that a fair statement?
00:15:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the sort of a fair statement by eliminations. It's like like it's like we didn't have like so this is using sort of survey data on like you know, yeah, did you do like did you go to church, et cetera? And did you socialize with your friends? And we sort of didn't see changing these socialization outcomes, like we do people like going attending church less, but that doesn't seem to s spill over into their like you know, do you socialize with like friends, neighbors, relatives, things like that, And so there's the questions like what what else is going to church besides sort of you know, going to your bowling league. You know, one aspect of it is this sort of like identity and sense of maybe purpose that it provides.
00:16:19
Speaker 1: Did you did you all think about it or do you have any thoughts on church or religious community as constraint. So you know, you have the blue laws that are constraining retail, and they're eliminating those as choices, but most religious communities are going.
00:16:35
Speaker 3: To have.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: Loose sets of rules in probably in the best case right and and sort of a prototypical understanding of what an ideal congregant is going to be, let's say, and there's going to be the sets of attributes that tend to guide people within that environment and say, yeah, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to do that. So in addition to giving that sense of purpose, it also does sort of box you in a bit more.
00:17:02
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I think I think that is like a potential story as well that like could be going on. It's not like the one results we have sort of on this svein is that like people are not like drinking more casually, So there's a sense of like, oh, like you know, we don't approve of like alcohol in general. It's not that like people are like loosely weakening that constraint, but there's a lot of other sort of constraints that sort of you know, have some costs, have some benefits, that people might be sort of being differently without sort of that weakly reminder of those social maps.
00:17:46
Speaker 1: And it doesn't seem like, because I don't want to overread this, but it doesn't seem like, let's say I go to my bowling league instead of going to church, and I have a few beers, and then all of a sudden, I have a few more beers when I get home, and I have a few more beers after that, and this leads to one of the deaths of the space, which is, you know, the sort of alcohol liver symbrone kind of thing. It's not that straight a line, is what I'm hearing from you. It's more like there are going to be It was a pink As Cohn. I don't think it was pink As con I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he wrote The Tyranny of Small Decisions kind of back in the late seventies.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with that at all? Okay?
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, he basically said you know, He's like, we're all making these small decisions all the time, and we're not thinking about the long term consequences of those small decisions, and at some point down the line, we'll look back and go, man, I kind of wish I hadn't made that small decision back there, just look where it's led me. And so I'm just sort of wondering, when you think about it from an economic perspective, how do you really think about these Obviously, changing the blue laws doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
00:18:56
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, it doesn't.
00:18:59
Speaker 3: No, And it's sort of you know, there's there's other evidence that, like, uh, retail owners were sort of on both sides of you know, should we do this, should we not do this? People mostly sort of reality I did. They're shopping across different days. It wasn't online. Now people are like buying more and this is like a huge change to the American economy or to the state's economy. No, but I think I think this is all sort of like one of the things that economists love to do is sort of trying to think about like these unintended consequences, Like nobody who was thinking about you know, should we revealed the blue Laws was thinking, you know, maybe because also like that this was in the seventies and eighties, like oxen cotton wasn't a thing. And actually I think that's that's I think one thing I literally want to like highlighted about that about this paper is that this is about sort of the very early increase in depth despair that occurred before a lot before.
00:20:01
Speaker 1: Oxyconoms on the market, THEOD crisis and those kind of things.
00:20:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think there is now very convincing evidence that like you know, Purdue Pharma and like the availability of opioids, like that these massively exacerbated these deaths of despair. And so like, this paper is not saying at all, you know, people should just be religious and then we can we don't have to, you know, worry about Purdue and various opioid formulations. It's just it's saying that, like, even before all of this, something was changing in all in like mortality, particularly for these sort of middle aged, low educated Americans, something was changing, and it's and it occurred at the same time that wegious affiliation was changing for this group as well. So like what what maybe connects those two, and then and then you're add in all of these you.
00:21:10
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, you know, it's much worse.
00:21:17
Speaker 2: How do you think?
00:21:18
Speaker 1: So, my backgrounds in theology, right, so we get to we get to play without a lot of empirical data most of the time, right, we stay in you know, in the in the theoretical side, and so statistics, my eyes just kind of gloss over. But when you're thinking about it from this level and you're actually trying to figure out those you know, significant statistically significant connections and correlations, how do you do a multivariate analysis like that where you sit back and say, okay, we've we've noticed this trend with the blue laws, and we've seen this and this is really a cool correlation, and there you know, there's obviously something happening here. Do you go back in and study that same period and ask yourself, well, what if we look now at this factor, do we see that correlated in the same way?
00:22:05
Speaker 2: What does that look like to do those things?
00:22:07
Speaker 3: That's a great, great question. So it's like, you know, we're wondering, does sort of change in religion affect us to despair? There's a hundred other things that that sort of could be going on. Right, Okay, it's a good question, it's a trigger question. So what we do in this paper is basically build this evidence that like these things are related in time, they're affecting the same groups of people. So it's like these middle aged, low educated groups that are like experiences declined religion and these increase in deaths to despair. We look at it at the state level. States that sort of had greater decrease in religiosity had greater increases in death to spare. And then the third part that paper is like looking at these like blue laws and arguing that like the states that had these laws bigger things and everything else. So you're basically just building as evidence, and the comparison group is like would we expect you know, these relationships to occur randomly? And then the tricky thing so like you know, we get we get the result that like you know, uh, there's a very small chance this would occur randomly just by like you know, right, Uh, this correlation is like strong enough that's unlikely duke to occur randomly. The tricky thing that you point out is maybe this is this this tell me this is what you're saying. Yeah, there's one hundred things that could affect us despair, right, testimal, We're gonna get five of them that pop up, yeah, as to stick. So you know, if I was a very bad economist, I would test one hundred things. I would find five of them, and I write those five papers, I would publish them, et cetera. Okay, hopefully that's not what people do. There is is point of course, like to some extent, you know this, you know, you know economists response was scentive, like things like that, Sure, how do you The way that I think about this is like there's a handful of like you want to sort of pre specify what you're going to like.
00:24:38
Speaker 2: Consider understood beforehand.
00:24:40
Speaker 3: Ideally, you like we all as economists would get together and specify, like these are our top ten things. Are now going to test them. Going into this, I think this prior that social ties and community and for many Americans that is, religion might have something to do with you know, health and mortality seems like a compelling hypothesis like bowling alone and all of these it's a really strong like correlation. Yeah, so that's why we looked at this one as supposed to the ninety nine other ones. That's not to say, like some of the ninety nine other ones, I think our part of the story, like oxytrotten, probably number one.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: Availability of these things has to factor in, and.
00:25:35
Speaker 3: Like ours is maybe you know, number four or five or somewhere in that ranking. And I guess, like based on our priors and like other people's priors, this seems like a reasonable hypothesis to test. Is that what your question was?
00:25:54
Speaker 2: It is?
00:25:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, because I think what I'm trying to figure out is when we go back and look at this practically right, there's a knee jerk reaction that would say, well, this is an easy solve.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Just reinstitute the blue laws.
00:26:08
Speaker 1: Oh right, you know, like the simpler But I mean, and I'm saying, that's the knee jerk, Like this simplified reading of what you did.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: You'd say, well, we need to go back to that same constraint.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: But that's probably not going to work because at this point we've got so many other factors around us that returning to that point and saying, oh, if we just put this back in place, everything will be fantastic, probably isn't What's going to happen. Like we've gone from like arguably across that period.
00:26:38
Speaker 2: Again, so I grew up in that period.
00:26:40
Speaker 1: So I never had, for instance, games scheduled on a Sunday morning. If we had a soccer game or something like that I was going to play, it was always in the afternoon, and so you preserve that time for church. You know, before that time that's not on the book's law. That was just sort of my experience of it. Things weren't scheduled over the top of church. You know, you didn't travel anywhere near as much for sports teams that didn't come in until I was close to out of high school, you know that that started happening, And so you've got all these other things to sort of glob on now that just reinstituting one thing isn't going to work. And so yeah, I'm just trying to think through like as you think about your work here and you think about practical solutions for folks, that you're kind of sitting back saying what does this really mean on the ground for people, or if you were going to inform on policy, what does this really look like?
00:27:36
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I think one of the other this is Okay, I'll start with my cop on answer which is that I most economists, myself included, like, I see my role as like providing information and data and being like, oh like if we changed if we did this, this would effect have these consequences if it did this this, And then you know, politicians voters can decide what set of preferences they would they would prefer, Like my job is to put numbers to these kind of factuals. My you know, my preferences are just one of three hundred and fifty million. So that's the common answer.
00:28:24
Speaker 2: Is that, like you know, yeah, you know, yeah, totally fair.
00:28:27
Speaker 3: That's sort of where I see role ending in the in the more exciting scenario where I have some control over policy, Yes, I this. I I don't see sort of sort of adding constraints to people as being a popular thing to do in general. Is in general, like people, people don't like soda taxes, they don't like you know, any you know, forced social security say like no one, no one likes being told what to do, even though you know it might be better in the long run. So yes, so this and and of course like it. You know, it gets a little bit you can't say we're gonna have Sunday mornings off and sort of a multi religion environment. But I do think from sort of a more more personal perspective, I think this does make me consider, Okay, you know, I want to make time for these long run connections and things that are important to me, even though it might be sort of convenient in the short run. And then maybe there's there's more. You know, we have a community center in our neighborhood. It does a lot of wonderful like you know, pottery and dance, like all these sorts of things, and sort of maybe there's there's some more policy funding support for understood things that would connect people.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it feels like it does at this point at least, And this is what I would just again, having read through this and understood the connection with the blue laws, I find it really interesting, but also recognizing there's no chance of going back, right, there's not that's the right, And so it feels like me it does ratchet down at least one level, if not to you know, maybe both to an organizational level where it falls to real really like the places we work to be thinking through the implications that your article has, How is it that we give now people time? How do we how can we free up for our employees this space where they could choose to go do this? And then on an individual level, how do we as individuals start to choose things that are better for us rather than worse for us? And then, as you said, you know, how do we fund some of these social organizations within a given community so that when organization is actually going on board with this, then people have the ability to choose those like there has to be something there, And yeah, it's just a really interesting sort of once the laws are repealed, putting them back in place sort of probably isn't going to happen, But you do see some of this navigation even in policy nowadays. Like I don't know, I think you could find an analogy in something like parental time off after kids, you know, those kind of things.
00:31:48
Speaker 2: Like you can see some of these.
00:31:50
Speaker 1: Pieces where people are trying to poke this bear, but certainly not going back to what you describe in your article.
00:31:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, like additional angle you added where there's so that you can you know, individual choices you can make. They're sort of like funding choices and they're also like your work potentially, and there's there's some you know, more research now on you know, you know, can people be just a productive and a four day work leads in a five day work week? And sort of and I think you're posting an instant question of like, you know, if you put some like no email on weekend's policy, long run, might that be better for your employees? You know, potentially? I think I think that's a that's an interesting and like creative way of like approaching that. One one one tricky thing with that is like, you know, these are longer run benefits, and so you know, if you're happier putting more proactive person and then you leave my firm, Uh, that's annoying for me who has invested in you know, all of these beautiful, you mal free weekends you just had. So like the incentive somewhat worked better on like a larger scale, but of course it's sort of harder to get everyone to agree on what to do in a larger scale. It is.
00:33:12
Speaker 1: It is interesting. I mean I go to Germany periodically. I've been over there a number of different times, and I remember the first time I was ever there and I tried to go to the store on a Sunday and it's like there's very little open I mean, you could find a place, but it was not easy and you had to you had to work hard for it, and you just sort of look at that and you're like, well, Germany is a pretty modern nation there there.
00:33:37
Speaker 2: I don't know whether it's a law I didn't like look into that.
00:33:39
Speaker 1: I assume it is, but it could also just be the choice of specific retailers to start coordinating and saying we're just not going to have We're just not going to be open here, or only some of us are going to be open here, and you know, we're going to manufacture this break.
00:33:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean then the trains around on time in Germany, so like they said to be doing fine with that without there they're shopping. But you you mentioned I think a very cute key thing, which is this coordination. Like if I'm the only shop open on Sunday, no one no one is going shopping, no one's gonna come to my store, no one expects it, so then I might as well close and like enjoy the day with my family as well. If everyone's open, I'm losing on business thing like that. So it's sort of you know, we you know, maybe everyone would love to coordinate on something, but and that's that's hard to do in the absence of, you know, more more societal regulations.
00:34:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm wondering what you know. You said you're into health based sort of economics, and so as you look at this study, you know, my mind went very particular places, like the effects of remote work. I've been working remote since twenty eighteen, and I'm sort of I'm starting to feel aware and tear of it quite frankly.
00:34:57
Speaker 2: I mean it's taken a.
00:34:58
Speaker 1: While, but you know, there are days when I don't leave my house and I'm like, what am I doing? Like I built a gym in my house, I've got you know, I work out of my house. My family's at my house, like we have groceries delivered. I'm like, I've essentially eliminated any sort of social interaction that I could possibly have during a day.
00:35:17
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering.
00:35:20
Speaker 1: It just seems like that would be an interesting area to sit back and say, this is obviously going to cause problems, and it just feels like it almost has to, doesn't.
00:35:30
Speaker 3: It, especially across the sort of tenyere distribution. So there's there's some interesting papers on remote work. I'm not I'll send us I'll send you some details. But like, I think one of the finance is that it's like, especially the younger you are in your career, the sort of the worst it is because makes sense benefit from all these informal connections, you know, and then there's there's there's benefits of course, you know, you can spend more time with your family. I think it increases women in the workforce, but then there's some longer run costs, especially if you think very long term in terms of like you know, the trajectories of young people and are they going to get the mentorship that they need. This makes me think one one policy that I that I think is some of bad policy my my husband's firm, which I won't do what they are They had a return to office policy only for the junior employees and the senior people all stay at home, and you're like, well, the benefit would be to talk with these people.
00:36:51
Speaker 2: So no, it's just interesting.
00:36:53
Speaker 1: I mean, I think as an entailment of your research, you kind of look at this and you can start to draw, like you get a vibe off of the paper right where there's a sense in which this correlation that you've described, you know, it shouldn't be applied just to everything, right, So I want to avoid saying, hey, just apply this to everything. It's a general principle now, and we could you know, if this will solve all the problems.
00:37:15
Speaker 2: It won't. But at the same time, there have to be these other trends that you're looking.
00:37:19
Speaker 1: At and going, my gosh, we're exacerbating what appears to be a real problem here, and so remote work came to my mind.
00:37:27
Speaker 2: But I'm wondering if there are any others for you.
00:37:30
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean just in terms of like any metric of socialization has like dramatically fallen in the past few decades, and I think I think the decline of rigulosity was sort of one of the early ones. So you see in like the late eighties early nineties, religious attendance and affiliation just sharply dropped the United States. But then just like yeah, the share of teenagers who like socialize or like you know, things like that has like also changed changed a lot. More so, like I think there's natural connections to like social media and like online versus in person connections, and then those are things that like I don't think this paper speaks to directly at all that, I'd be curious, you.
00:38:28
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, to look at channels.
00:38:32
Speaker 3: Don't don't apply there as well?
00:38:34
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I mean I think the last thing and I don't know whether you have any thoughts on this at all, so feel free to say now we didn't really I haven't really thought through that.
00:38:44
Speaker 2: But you know, part of my interest is in what could the church do?
00:38:51
Speaker 1: Right, So it's one of these organizations that it could actually provide some community, that can actually provide some things. But I would also just say I'm a realistic right, church isn't like the place you go to have a lot of fun. Necessarily it's enjoyable, but it's in that sort of uh, I have a yeah, I have a degree of contentment while I'm here, but it's not like a rock concert, you know.
00:39:17
Speaker 2: So any thoughts or anything out of the data, maybe.
00:39:20
Speaker 1: That wasn't even included in the paper that you'd suggest that, you know, as a church is looking at this and saying, wow, okay, you've got these deaths of despair and whether our people are you know, dying is a separate question. But there are some things that we could do to build back in a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a sense of what have you that maybe we're not doing now.
00:39:49
Speaker 3: I think my first reactions to this as someone who, as you know, spent no time thinking about what various relish leadership you do, but happy to offer opinions because I think I think almost everyone is lonely and there's some Yeah, like I think anything that makes connecting with other people easier might be helpful in that regard. I'm trying to so this is a very very sort of a more civic to my situation. But we have we have a toddler and then we're having another another kid soon. But just like if they're like, there's so many times in life where maybe you could sort of meet people that have sort of similar problems as you at that time, and to the extent that like these groups are well positioned to make those connections.
00:41:07
Speaker 2: That makes sense. And I guess last question.
00:41:13
Speaker 3: I want I want more daycare at churches. Maybe that's that's.
00:41:16
Speaker 2: Listen, that's that's fair.
00:41:18
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, honestly, I think churches have figured that out. Children's ministry has become kind of a big thing because it's like nobody wants to I mean, I remember sitting in church when I was a kid.
00:41:28
Speaker 2: I was horrible.
00:41:30
Speaker 1: No one wants no one wants to do that anymore, and there's no tolerance for UH children's service.
00:41:36
Speaker 2: So now I totally get that. I'm wondering about if you saw anything.
00:41:43
Speaker 1: I know you're doing sort of a big macro analysis, but I'm wondering if you saw anything that would suggest why people chose to go to drugs, to alcohol to suicide. In other words, you've got this plethora of choices about you. What was it about those three things that caused the increase in deaths of despair that just made sense to folks?
00:42:10
Speaker 2: Any any insight in that or is it just sort of I.
00:42:15
Speaker 3: Think that's That's where I'd have to say, I don't okay, I think at that point, I don't think there's a rational reason for that, and so so that we sort of rely on.
00:42:32
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like, like you said, the opioid increase and that kind of stuff was well beyond the time of the study, right, And did I understand that correctly this study?
00:42:41
Speaker 2: Yes?
00:42:42
Speaker 3: So Actually, so if you look at these deaths despair for this like middle aged group, I'm usually it's been declining over the seventies and eighties and starting in the nineties it stress to get and that that's the part that we started, like why is this increasing?
00:42:56
Speaker 2: Right?
00:42:57
Speaker 3: What's in the news now is like you why is it explainly growing? And that's I think, you know, a more structural like availability issue, But why does it sort of start to increase? There is I think maybe where this paper can come in. Yeah, but I think there's a lot of you know, remaining questions, and I think one of them is like, you know, what what is the sequence of steps in between A and B?
00:43:26
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's a really interesting trend.
00:43:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I found it fascinating to see this correlation that you all paint there, because it is sort of fascinating and I think it connects so much with a lot of the things that I work with conceptually but don't really have that empirical basis to it necessarily. You know, you're just kind of looking at it and going, it seems like it's happening. Is it really happening?
00:43:52
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, it yeah, all cause mortality is has been increasing for the past few decades and it's yeah, we'd love to reverse that.
00:44:03
Speaker 1: It would be nice, right, So what's next on the horizon? For you, like what's your next big research that you're involved in just out of curiosity.
00:44:15
Speaker 3: So I'm a hell of economist, Like quite broadly, one thing I'm working on now is new worm blood screenings, And specifically I mentioned this question of like what happens when you get a false positive for one of those of those things. So for most of these screenings, if you sort of pass this first flag, you don't actually have this serious condition, you don't actually have cancer or whatever. And sort of thinking about sort of quantifying the additional spending or sort of any any sort of costs and benefits of that. Gotcha the paper I'm I'm actually working on now.
00:45:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool. Well it's a fascinating field and really appreciate.
00:45:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
00:45:12
Speaker 1: No, Definitely econ one on one did not give me the sense that this was what it was about. So and I do remember reading Conment and going how is this economics? But I just enjoyed his book and so I just kept reading.
00:45:24
Speaker 2: It wasn't big.
00:45:28
Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for being on the show today. This is helpful. And uh, the article actually is available online, so I'm going to link it in the show notes. Uh, and so people can can read through it if they like, and I just I appreciate you being on this was an interesting topic and just really enjoyed the paper and found it interesting.
00:45:46
Speaker 2: So thanks great.
00:45:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I enjoyed talking to you, so thank you for the for the good questions.
00:45:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, all right, everybody, Well we'll call it a day there, and thanks for being here, thanks for being listening to the episode, and we'll catch on the next one.
00:45:59
Speaker 2: I think Christian take care.
00:46:01
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.
00:00:28
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode Thinking Christian.
00:00:30
Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer and I am joined today by doctor Tamar Ostrom.
00:00:35
Speaker 2: She is an assistant.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: Professor at the Ohio State University and one of the authors on a paper that's called Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion. And so while that may sound like a really upbeat topic, we're going to be talking about her research a bit and just trying to understand what the implications of certain blue laws are for this discos ession.
00:01:00
Speaker 2: So I really appreciate you being on the show tomorrow. Welcome.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: Thanks for reading my paper. Someone does.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: It feels good, doesn't it? So why don't we start here?
00:01:15
Speaker 1: Why don't you give us just kind of an overview of what the paper's about and just that broad summary, and then we'll dig into some of the points.
00:01:24
Speaker 3: Okay, So we were interested in this question of to what extent has religiosity affected this increase in what some people call death despair deaths due to a suicide, alcohol overdoses, and drug overdoses. So the broad picture is basically, does religion, community ties things like that, does that affect health? And so what evidence can we can we bring to that topic?
00:01:58
Speaker 2: Is it in the vein? So?
00:01:59
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read the paper and some of the things that sort of echoed for me were bowling alone, you know, the sort of idea that as the culture's institutions tend to decline a little bit and crumble a little bit, that you start to lose the sense of meaning and self and identity and then these things are more likely. Is that a Is that the way you're arguing or is there something more complex about it?
00:02:24
Speaker 3: I think I think that's like the hypothesis that we're considering. You know, like a lot of people have speculated that like your connections matter for your happiness, for your life expectancy, and this is sort of one way of testing that in here, Okay.
00:02:42
Speaker 1: And maybe one other question before we dive into the article. Economics. So I've read Daniel Kammons stuff, and I know he was an economist, but I really don't know what that means. So can you talk about your feel a little bit your background and just give people a context for why this topic would arise out of economics.
00:03:00
Speaker 3: An economics paper? Why is why part of my description? Yeah, that's a great question. So economics is so much broader than I thought it was when I took like equal one to one and had some supplying to Maan curves and was like, honestly, this is very boring, which I didn't realize until much, you know, many years after that. So economics is just like the study of like scarce resources, which is like anything. So we as economists have interpreted that super broadly to apply to things like I'm a health economist, so I study things like incentives and pharmaceutical innovation, thinking about sort of you know, drivers of these, like opioid overdoses. I have other things on, like, you know, why do people get mammograms. It's just anything that's like people making decisions under constraints, which there's always constraints in the real world. It's economics, and we've become quite imperialistic kind of and like the sorts of topics that economists study. I think the one thing that ties these papers together is sort of the way economists think about these problems and like the toolkits that we use.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in this paper, just from my reading of it and based on that description of economics, it's actually really helpful. So it feels like the constraint that's lifted off or what you call these blue laws, and once those constraints are lifted off, then people are free, free or maybe to make other choices. And these other choices have implications down the road that aren't immediately obvious, but that now ultimately sort of grow out of a meta analysis of all this research, and you can see a trend there is.
00:05:00
Speaker 2: Is that the right way to think of it?
00:05:02
Speaker 3: That's that's that's that's a great way of thinking about it. Basically, like the broader question is sort of like why have there been all of these? That's a despair? You know, what decisions are people making? So of what what are there like like economic and environmental like constraints? And then this paper is like thinking about, yes, like what if we change you know, the uh in this case, like people's tendency to go to church? Yes, what consequences does.
00:05:38
Speaker 1: That and what consequences that have? So talk a little bit about the blue laws. I've referenced a few times, but I thought that was a really interesting part of the paper. And then I've got some follow up questions just to clarify in my own mind.
00:05:52
Speaker 2: Maybe what's associated with blue laws.
00:05:54
Speaker 1: But go ahead and describe what the blue law is and kind of help people understand how that interact your study.
00:06:00
Speaker 3: Yes, so blue laws are just general prohibitions on retail activity, usually on Sundays. So this idea is that like the grocery store used to be closed on Sundays. I'm Dutch, still, like in Holland and many European countries you can't buy like milk or anything on Sundays. So that sort of just like laws, we're regulating commerce on certain days of the week, usually for sort of religious reasons. So why you might sort of not be familiar with this term is that, like currently most states don't have these restrictions. So in the nineteen sixties and seventies, almost all states had some version of these laws, and then over the time period that we study, sort of in like the the seventies and eighties into the nineties, most states repeal these laws. So then you could go shopping on Sunday. You could do something, you know, arguably more fun than going to church. These considints are lifted.
00:07:08
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, because I mean, I think I can remember times when I was younger.
00:07:14
Speaker 2: So I was born in seventy seven.
00:07:15
Speaker 3: Perfect for the study. Amazing firsthands.
00:07:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I got older and I could shop, I can still remember going to the store and seeing people not be able to buy alcohol. I wasn't old enough to buy alcohol at the time, but you could go to the store. But then there were certain even within those stores, there were restrictions, like you couldn't buy alcohol before noon. Let's say, Okay, I can remember those royals being there, so yeah, go ahead, Okay.
00:07:38
Speaker 3: So I do want to make a distinction that there's sort of two types of laws. There's laws on like can the store be open, and there's laws on like can alcohol be sold? Okay, the laws that we study are can the stores be open? So not directly about alcohol, and actually a lot of states still have alcohol laws in the books. I went to like brad School of Massachusetts, where you couldn't buy alcohol I think before sometime on Sunday, which you know, was not a part of my life until suddenly I'd be like, oh no, do it five minutes to buy the line? Yes, So we are not directly studying changes in these alcohol laws, okay, and usually there's sort of there's sort of separate laws on the books for those two days.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. So that was one of my questions, like, how how were those connected? So I'm glad we got through that. Then my next question then is how I'm like the connection between just being able to go shop, moving away from church, and then having this increase in deaths of despair becomes really harder for me to conceptualize because you know, you can almost draw a straight line conceptually without looking at any data. You could go, well, yeah, people now could buy alcohol on Sundays, and so obviously there's going to be more of this or there's going to be more of that. But if it's just the stores being opened and you can buy whatever it is that you'd like, and all you're doing is staying away from church, it's it's a more complex situation to understand why these other deaths are happening. So how talk about how you navigate that in the study?
00:09:21
Speaker 3: What's what's going on? So the first thing is that some other papers have looked at these lot changes and found, like we do that when you sort of give people more opportunities to do other things on Sunday, they do they like go shopping, they like do other things, and then this reduces church attendance and like affiliation. So what people are sort of less likely to go, say weekly, and they're also more likely to report they have sort of like a weak affiliation with the church. This is changing like behavior and like a little part of this is like also some part of the identity or like do you see yourself as someone who regularly attends church? Is that a important part of how you would describe yourself? And so then the question is like what what sort of the downstream consequences of like that be and why why would that effect uh death to spare down the road and like yeah, that's like what we see. So the actually I haven't actually quite gotten into like what what the identification is in the paper. Basically different states repeopled these laws at different times, and you can see after states repealed the laws that a couple of years later, deaths due to these sort of deaths of despair increase in those dates, and then they don't increase in those states where like these laws didn't change. H So.
00:11:04
Speaker 1: You know, so you'd use the states that where the laws didn't change. Is almost like a control group. Yes, and then as you saw a difference between the states that released those laws got rid of them, then you're able to see significant differences between deaths of despair and a state that still had the laws versus death of despair that didn't have the laws.
00:11:24
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, so it's like a treatment verse control straight. And then also like the timing of those lat changes, like we should see effects earlier for the states there earlier and later for the others. Yeah, and we shouldn't see differences between those states before the law changed right as well?
00:11:39
Speaker 2: Right?
00:11:40
Speaker 3: Yes, interesting, But I guess to sort of go back to like, you know, why is this happening? I think this is something where like the papers more speculative on, so we looked at like social connections, like were those changing? Were you sort of more less likely socialize with your friends and relatives that didn't seem to change as much. We did see sort of increases in not in like safe drinking, like did you go to the bar with your friends? Did you like occasionally drink? But we did see increases in like self reported like unsafe drinking, did you like drink more than you should? And things like that. So potentially this is a story about you know, purpose and like identity and like something like that or just you know this. For many Americans, this is one of the most frequent sort of social interactions. You have sort of like the large part of your community. And if suddenly, like your friends stops showing up or sort of you stop showing up, potentially that would have sort of long term consequences.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to think, I mean, and again I don't want to extrapolate too far from your data, but having done some work in this area myself, where you look at the proliferation of choice just generally, and the way that that tends to fragment people and create this ongoing desire for more right, Like we've all heard of fomo right, the fear of missing out right, and so it almost creates this underlying anxiety where I'm not doing what I should be doing or what I could be doing. There's so many other things I could be doing right now and I'm not able to do them or what have you. It just feels like that would tie in somehow, But I don't reading your article. Obviously they weren't like empirical results that would suggest that, But it just feels like that's part of the context that we're creating with some of these things, and that what you guys are showing with these blue law repeals is that without certain restraints, unind choice may not be the best move for all of us.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: I can at least say.
00:14:04
Speaker 3: That that's same. I mean, yeah, there's there's these papers sort of less like specific about this, but I agree with that general concept, like in general, like you know, there's papers that if you like, have the default to be to save more for retirement. You know, people are happy with that ten twenty years later than if you say, you know, free choice, do whatever you'd like. And there's you know, this whole food of economics on like you know, people have your the present cells and their future cells, and they're often in conflict and like sort of you know, maybe the best thing for your future self would be to like invest in your social network and your friendships, but the best thing for your current self is to like you know, stay home today and relax, right, And yeah, so like that you know potentially, like is a dynamic that that's going on in this setting as well? Do you?
00:15:01
Speaker 1: I mean again, you mentioned that people didn't spend less time with their families and friends after these blue laws were taken out, and that there really seemed to be something about being in a local religious community that was holding these other things back.
00:15:24
Speaker 2: Is that a Is that a fair statement?
00:15:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the sort of a fair statement by eliminations. It's like like it's like we didn't have like so this is using sort of survey data on like you know, yeah, did you do like did you go to church, et cetera? And did you socialize with your friends? And we sort of didn't see changing these socialization outcomes, like we do people like going attending church less, but that doesn't seem to s spill over into their like you know, do you socialize with like friends, neighbors, relatives, things like that, And so there's the questions like what what else is going to church besides sort of you know, going to your bowling league. You know, one aspect of it is this sort of like identity and sense of maybe purpose that it provides.
00:16:19
Speaker 1: Did you did you all think about it or do you have any thoughts on church or religious community as constraint. So you know, you have the blue laws that are constraining retail, and they're eliminating those as choices, but most religious communities are going.
00:16:35
Speaker 3: To have.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: Loose sets of rules in probably in the best case right and and sort of a prototypical understanding of what an ideal congregant is going to be, let's say, and there's going to be the sets of attributes that tend to guide people within that environment and say, yeah, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to do that. So in addition to giving that sense of purpose, it also does sort of box you in a bit more.
00:17:02
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I think I think that is like a potential story as well that like could be going on. It's not like the one results we have sort of on this svein is that like people are not like drinking more casually, So there's a sense of like, oh, like you know, we don't approve of like alcohol in general. It's not that like people are like loosely weakening that constraint, but there's a lot of other sort of constraints that sort of you know, have some costs, have some benefits, that people might be sort of being differently without sort of that weakly reminder of those social maps.
00:17:46
Speaker 1: And it doesn't seem like, because I don't want to overread this, but it doesn't seem like, let's say I go to my bowling league instead of going to church, and I have a few beers, and then all of a sudden, I have a few more beers when I get home, and I have a few more beers after that, and this leads to one of the deaths of the space, which is, you know, the sort of alcohol liver symbrone kind of thing. It's not that straight a line, is what I'm hearing from you. It's more like there are going to be It was a pink As Cohn. I don't think it was pink As con I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he wrote The Tyranny of Small Decisions kind of back in the late seventies.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with that at all? Okay?
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, he basically said you know, He's like, we're all making these small decisions all the time, and we're not thinking about the long term consequences of those small decisions, and at some point down the line, we'll look back and go, man, I kind of wish I hadn't made that small decision back there, just look where it's led me. And so I'm just sort of wondering, when you think about it from an economic perspective, how do you really think about these Obviously, changing the blue laws doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
00:18:56
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, it doesn't.
00:18:59
Speaker 3: No, And it's sort of you know, there's there's other evidence that, like, uh, retail owners were sort of on both sides of you know, should we do this, should we not do this? People mostly sort of reality I did. They're shopping across different days. It wasn't online. Now people are like buying more and this is like a huge change to the American economy or to the state's economy. No, but I think I think this is all sort of like one of the things that economists love to do is sort of trying to think about like these unintended consequences, Like nobody who was thinking about you know, should we revealed the blue Laws was thinking, you know, maybe because also like that this was in the seventies and eighties, like oxen cotton wasn't a thing. And actually I think that's that's I think one thing I literally want to like highlighted about that about this paper is that this is about sort of the very early increase in depth despair that occurred before a lot before.
00:20:01
Speaker 1: Oxyconoms on the market, THEOD crisis and those kind of things.
00:20:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think there is now very convincing evidence that like you know, Purdue Pharma and like the availability of opioids, like that these massively exacerbated these deaths of despair. And so like, this paper is not saying at all, you know, people should just be religious and then we can we don't have to, you know, worry about Purdue and various opioid formulations. It's just it's saying that, like, even before all of this, something was changing in all in like mortality, particularly for these sort of middle aged, low educated Americans, something was changing, and it's and it occurred at the same time that wegious affiliation was changing for this group as well. So like what what maybe connects those two, and then and then you're add in all of these you.
00:21:10
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, you know, it's much worse.
00:21:17
Speaker 2: How do you think?
00:21:18
Speaker 1: So, my backgrounds in theology, right, so we get to we get to play without a lot of empirical data most of the time, right, we stay in you know, in the in the theoretical side, and so statistics, my eyes just kind of gloss over. But when you're thinking about it from this level and you're actually trying to figure out those you know, significant statistically significant connections and correlations, how do you do a multivariate analysis like that where you sit back and say, okay, we've we've noticed this trend with the blue laws, and we've seen this and this is really a cool correlation, and there you know, there's obviously something happening here. Do you go back in and study that same period and ask yourself, well, what if we look now at this factor, do we see that correlated in the same way?
00:22:05
Speaker 2: What does that look like to do those things?
00:22:07
Speaker 3: That's a great, great question. So it's like, you know, we're wondering, does sort of change in religion affect us to despair? There's a hundred other things that that sort of could be going on. Right, Okay, it's a good question, it's a trigger question. So what we do in this paper is basically build this evidence that like these things are related in time, they're affecting the same groups of people. So it's like these middle aged, low educated groups that are like experiences declined religion and these increase in deaths to despair. We look at it at the state level. States that sort of had greater decrease in religiosity had greater increases in death to spare. And then the third part that paper is like looking at these like blue laws and arguing that like the states that had these laws bigger things and everything else. So you're basically just building as evidence, and the comparison group is like would we expect you know, these relationships to occur randomly? And then the tricky thing so like you know, we get we get the result that like you know, uh, there's a very small chance this would occur randomly just by like you know, right, Uh, this correlation is like strong enough that's unlikely duke to occur randomly. The tricky thing that you point out is maybe this is this this tell me this is what you're saying. Yeah, there's one hundred things that could affect us despair, right, testimal, We're gonna get five of them that pop up, yeah, as to stick. So you know, if I was a very bad economist, I would test one hundred things. I would find five of them, and I write those five papers, I would publish them, et cetera. Okay, hopefully that's not what people do. There is is point of course, like to some extent, you know this, you know, you know economists response was scentive, like things like that, Sure, how do you The way that I think about this is like there's a handful of like you want to sort of pre specify what you're going to like.
00:24:38
Speaker 2: Consider understood beforehand.
00:24:40
Speaker 3: Ideally, you like we all as economists would get together and specify, like these are our top ten things. Are now going to test them. Going into this, I think this prior that social ties and community and for many Americans that is, religion might have something to do with you know, health and mortality seems like a compelling hypothesis like bowling alone and all of these it's a really strong like correlation. Yeah, so that's why we looked at this one as supposed to the ninety nine other ones. That's not to say, like some of the ninety nine other ones, I think our part of the story, like oxytrotten, probably number one.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: Availability of these things has to factor in, and.
00:25:35
Speaker 3: Like ours is maybe you know, number four or five or somewhere in that ranking. And I guess, like based on our priors and like other people's priors, this seems like a reasonable hypothesis to test. Is that what your question was?
00:25:54
Speaker 2: It is?
00:25:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, because I think what I'm trying to figure out is when we go back and look at this practically right, there's a knee jerk reaction that would say, well, this is an easy solve.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Just reinstitute the blue laws.
00:26:08
Speaker 1: Oh right, you know, like the simpler But I mean, and I'm saying, that's the knee jerk, Like this simplified reading of what you did.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: You'd say, well, we need to go back to that same constraint.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: But that's probably not going to work because at this point we've got so many other factors around us that returning to that point and saying, oh, if we just put this back in place, everything will be fantastic, probably isn't What's going to happen. Like we've gone from like arguably across that period.
00:26:38
Speaker 2: Again, so I grew up in that period.
00:26:40
Speaker 1: So I never had, for instance, games scheduled on a Sunday morning. If we had a soccer game or something like that I was going to play, it was always in the afternoon, and so you preserve that time for church. You know, before that time that's not on the book's law. That was just sort of my experience of it. Things weren't scheduled over the top of church. You know, you didn't travel anywhere near as much for sports teams that didn't come in until I was close to out of high school, you know that that started happening, And so you've got all these other things to sort of glob on now that just reinstituting one thing isn't going to work. And so yeah, I'm just trying to think through like as you think about your work here and you think about practical solutions for folks, that you're kind of sitting back saying what does this really mean on the ground for people, or if you were going to inform on policy, what does this really look like?
00:27:36
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I think one of the other this is Okay, I'll start with my cop on answer which is that I most economists, myself included, like, I see my role as like providing information and data and being like, oh like if we changed if we did this, this would effect have these consequences if it did this this, And then you know, politicians voters can decide what set of preferences they would they would prefer, Like my job is to put numbers to these kind of factuals. My you know, my preferences are just one of three hundred and fifty million. So that's the common answer.
00:28:24
Speaker 2: Is that, like you know, yeah, you know, yeah, totally fair.
00:28:27
Speaker 3: That's sort of where I see role ending in the in the more exciting scenario where I have some control over policy, Yes, I this. I I don't see sort of sort of adding constraints to people as being a popular thing to do in general. Is in general, like people, people don't like soda taxes, they don't like you know, any you know, forced social security say like no one, no one likes being told what to do, even though you know it might be better in the long run. So yes, so this and and of course like it. You know, it gets a little bit you can't say we're gonna have Sunday mornings off and sort of a multi religion environment. But I do think from sort of a more more personal perspective, I think this does make me consider, Okay, you know, I want to make time for these long run connections and things that are important to me, even though it might be sort of convenient in the short run. And then maybe there's there's more. You know, we have a community center in our neighborhood. It does a lot of wonderful like you know, pottery and dance, like all these sorts of things, and sort of maybe there's there's some more policy funding support for understood things that would connect people.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it feels like it does at this point at least, And this is what I would just again, having read through this and understood the connection with the blue laws, I find it really interesting, but also recognizing there's no chance of going back, right, there's not that's the right, And so it feels like me it does ratchet down at least one level, if not to you know, maybe both to an organizational level where it falls to real really like the places we work to be thinking through the implications that your article has, How is it that we give now people time? How do we how can we free up for our employees this space where they could choose to go do this? And then on an individual level, how do we as individuals start to choose things that are better for us rather than worse for us? And then, as you said, you know, how do we fund some of these social organizations within a given community so that when organization is actually going on board with this, then people have the ability to choose those like there has to be something there, And yeah, it's just a really interesting sort of once the laws are repealed, putting them back in place sort of probably isn't going to happen, But you do see some of this navigation even in policy nowadays. Like I don't know, I think you could find an analogy in something like parental time off after kids, you know, those kind of things.
00:31:48
Speaker 2: Like you can see some of these.
00:31:50
Speaker 1: Pieces where people are trying to poke this bear, but certainly not going back to what you describe in your article.
00:31:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, like additional angle you added where there's so that you can you know, individual choices you can make. They're sort of like funding choices and they're also like your work potentially, and there's there's some you know, more research now on you know, you know, can people be just a productive and a four day work leads in a five day work week? And sort of and I think you're posting an instant question of like, you know, if you put some like no email on weekend's policy, long run, might that be better for your employees? You know, potentially? I think I think that's a that's an interesting and like creative way of like approaching that. One one one tricky thing with that is like, you know, these are longer run benefits, and so you know, if you're happier putting more proactive person and then you leave my firm, Uh, that's annoying for me who has invested in you know, all of these beautiful, you mal free weekends you just had. So like the incentive somewhat worked better on like a larger scale, but of course it's sort of harder to get everyone to agree on what to do in a larger scale. It is.
00:33:12
Speaker 1: It is interesting. I mean I go to Germany periodically. I've been over there a number of different times, and I remember the first time I was ever there and I tried to go to the store on a Sunday and it's like there's very little open I mean, you could find a place, but it was not easy and you had to you had to work hard for it, and you just sort of look at that and you're like, well, Germany is a pretty modern nation there there.
00:33:37
Speaker 2: I don't know whether it's a law I didn't like look into that.
00:33:39
Speaker 1: I assume it is, but it could also just be the choice of specific retailers to start coordinating and saying we're just not going to have We're just not going to be open here, or only some of us are going to be open here, and you know, we're going to manufacture this break.
00:33:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean then the trains around on time in Germany, so like they said to be doing fine with that without there they're shopping. But you you mentioned I think a very cute key thing, which is this coordination. Like if I'm the only shop open on Sunday, no one no one is going shopping, no one's gonna come to my store, no one expects it, so then I might as well close and like enjoy the day with my family as well. If everyone's open, I'm losing on business thing like that. So it's sort of you know, we you know, maybe everyone would love to coordinate on something, but and that's that's hard to do in the absence of, you know, more more societal regulations.
00:34:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm wondering what you know. You said you're into health based sort of economics, and so as you look at this study, you know, my mind went very particular places, like the effects of remote work. I've been working remote since twenty eighteen, and I'm sort of I'm starting to feel aware and tear of it quite frankly.
00:34:57
Speaker 2: I mean it's taken a.
00:34:58
Speaker 1: While, but you know, there are days when I don't leave my house and I'm like, what am I doing? Like I built a gym in my house, I've got you know, I work out of my house. My family's at my house, like we have groceries delivered. I'm like, I've essentially eliminated any sort of social interaction that I could possibly have during a day.
00:35:17
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering.
00:35:20
Speaker 1: It just seems like that would be an interesting area to sit back and say, this is obviously going to cause problems, and it just feels like it almost has to, doesn't.
00:35:30
Speaker 3: It, especially across the sort of tenyere distribution. So there's there's some interesting papers on remote work. I'm not I'll send us I'll send you some details. But like, I think one of the finance is that it's like, especially the younger you are in your career, the sort of the worst it is because makes sense benefit from all these informal connections, you know, and then there's there's there's benefits of course, you know, you can spend more time with your family. I think it increases women in the workforce, but then there's some longer run costs, especially if you think very long term in terms of like you know, the trajectories of young people and are they going to get the mentorship that they need. This makes me think one one policy that I that I think is some of bad policy my my husband's firm, which I won't do what they are They had a return to office policy only for the junior employees and the senior people all stay at home, and you're like, well, the benefit would be to talk with these people.
00:36:51
Speaker 2: So no, it's just interesting.
00:36:53
Speaker 1: I mean, I think as an entailment of your research, you kind of look at this and you can start to draw, like you get a vibe off of the paper right where there's a sense in which this correlation that you've described, you know, it shouldn't be applied just to everything, right, So I want to avoid saying, hey, just apply this to everything. It's a general principle now, and we could you know, if this will solve all the problems.
00:37:15
Speaker 2: It won't. But at the same time, there have to be these other trends that you're looking.
00:37:19
Speaker 1: At and going, my gosh, we're exacerbating what appears to be a real problem here, and so remote work came to my mind.
00:37:27
Speaker 2: But I'm wondering if there are any others for you.
00:37:30
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean just in terms of like any metric of socialization has like dramatically fallen in the past few decades, and I think I think the decline of rigulosity was sort of one of the early ones. So you see in like the late eighties early nineties, religious attendance and affiliation just sharply dropped the United States. But then just like yeah, the share of teenagers who like socialize or like you know, things like that has like also changed changed a lot. More so, like I think there's natural connections to like social media and like online versus in person connections, and then those are things that like I don't think this paper speaks to directly at all that, I'd be curious, you.
00:38:28
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, to look at channels.
00:38:32
Speaker 3: Don't don't apply there as well?
00:38:34
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I mean I think the last thing and I don't know whether you have any thoughts on this at all, so feel free to say now we didn't really I haven't really thought through that.
00:38:44
Speaker 2: But you know, part of my interest is in what could the church do?
00:38:51
Speaker 1: Right, So it's one of these organizations that it could actually provide some community, that can actually provide some things. But I would also just say I'm a realistic right, church isn't like the place you go to have a lot of fun. Necessarily it's enjoyable, but it's in that sort of uh, I have a yeah, I have a degree of contentment while I'm here, but it's not like a rock concert, you know.
00:39:17
Speaker 2: So any thoughts or anything out of the data, maybe.
00:39:20
Speaker 1: That wasn't even included in the paper that you'd suggest that, you know, as a church is looking at this and saying, wow, okay, you've got these deaths of despair and whether our people are you know, dying is a separate question. But there are some things that we could do to build back in a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a sense of what have you that maybe we're not doing now.
00:39:49
Speaker 3: I think my first reactions to this as someone who, as you know, spent no time thinking about what various relish leadership you do, but happy to offer opinions because I think I think almost everyone is lonely and there's some Yeah, like I think anything that makes connecting with other people easier might be helpful in that regard. I'm trying to so this is a very very sort of a more civic to my situation. But we have we have a toddler and then we're having another another kid soon. But just like if they're like, there's so many times in life where maybe you could sort of meet people that have sort of similar problems as you at that time, and to the extent that like these groups are well positioned to make those connections.
00:41:07
Speaker 2: That makes sense. And I guess last question.
00:41:13
Speaker 3: I want I want more daycare at churches. Maybe that's that's.
00:41:16
Speaker 2: Listen, that's that's fair.
00:41:18
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, honestly, I think churches have figured that out. Children's ministry has become kind of a big thing because it's like nobody wants to I mean, I remember sitting in church when I was a kid.
00:41:28
Speaker 2: I was horrible.
00:41:30
Speaker 1: No one wants no one wants to do that anymore, and there's no tolerance for UH children's service.
00:41:36
Speaker 2: So now I totally get that. I'm wondering about if you saw anything.
00:41:43
Speaker 1: I know you're doing sort of a big macro analysis, but I'm wondering if you saw anything that would suggest why people chose to go to drugs, to alcohol to suicide. In other words, you've got this plethora of choices about you. What was it about those three things that caused the increase in deaths of despair that just made sense to folks?
00:42:10
Speaker 2: Any any insight in that or is it just sort of I.
00:42:15
Speaker 3: Think that's That's where I'd have to say, I don't okay, I think at that point, I don't think there's a rational reason for that, and so so that we sort of rely on.
00:42:32
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like, like you said, the opioid increase and that kind of stuff was well beyond the time of the study, right, And did I understand that correctly this study?
00:42:41
Speaker 2: Yes?
00:42:42
Speaker 3: So Actually, so if you look at these deaths despair for this like middle aged group, I'm usually it's been declining over the seventies and eighties and starting in the nineties it stress to get and that that's the part that we started, like why is this increasing?
00:42:56
Speaker 2: Right?
00:42:57
Speaker 3: What's in the news now is like you why is it explainly growing? And that's I think, you know, a more structural like availability issue, But why does it sort of start to increase? There is I think maybe where this paper can come in. Yeah, but I think there's a lot of you know, remaining questions, and I think one of them is like, you know, what what is the sequence of steps in between A and B?
00:43:26
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's a really interesting trend.
00:43:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I found it fascinating to see this correlation that you all paint there, because it is sort of fascinating and I think it connects so much with a lot of the things that I work with conceptually but don't really have that empirical basis to it necessarily. You know, you're just kind of looking at it and going, it seems like it's happening. Is it really happening?
00:43:52
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, it yeah, all cause mortality is has been increasing for the past few decades and it's yeah, we'd love to reverse that.
00:44:03
Speaker 1: It would be nice, right, So what's next on the horizon? For you, like what's your next big research that you're involved in just out of curiosity.
00:44:15
Speaker 3: So I'm a hell of economist, Like quite broadly, one thing I'm working on now is new worm blood screenings, And specifically I mentioned this question of like what happens when you get a false positive for one of those of those things. So for most of these screenings, if you sort of pass this first flag, you don't actually have this serious condition, you don't actually have cancer or whatever. And sort of thinking about sort of quantifying the additional spending or sort of any any sort of costs and benefits of that. Gotcha the paper I'm I'm actually working on now.
00:45:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool. Well it's a fascinating field and really appreciate.
00:45:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
00:45:12
Speaker 1: No, Definitely econ one on one did not give me the sense that this was what it was about. So and I do remember reading Conment and going how is this economics? But I just enjoyed his book and so I just kept reading.
00:45:24
Speaker 2: It wasn't big.
00:45:28
Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for being on the show today. This is helpful. And uh, the article actually is available online, so I'm going to link it in the show notes. Uh, and so people can can read through it if they like, and I just I appreciate you being on this was an interesting topic and just really enjoyed the paper and found it interesting.
00:45:46
Speaker 2: So thanks great.
00:45:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I enjoyed talking to you, so thank you for the for the good questions.
00:45:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, all right, everybody, Well we'll call it a day there, and thanks for being here, thanks for being listening to the episode, and we'll catch on the next one.
00:45:59
Speaker 2: I think Christian take care.
00:46:01
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.
