That’s the subject of an fascinating paper by Ho (2023).
Prescription drug use has reached historic highs in the USA—a pattern linked to will increase in medicalization, institutional components referring to the well being care and pharmaceutical industries, and inhabitants getting older and rising burdens of power illness. Regardless of the excessive and rising prevalence of use, no estimates exist of the full variety of years Individuals can count on to spend taking pharmaceuticals over their lifetimes. This research supplies the primary estimates of life course patterns of prescription drug use utilizing knowledge from the 1996–2019 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys, the Human Mortality Database, and the Nationwide Heart for Well being Statistics. Newborns in 2019 could possibly be anticipated to take pharmaceuticals for roughly half their lives: 47.54 years for ladies and 36.84 years for males. The variety of years people can count on to take 5 or extra medication elevated considerably. Individuals additionally skilled notably dramatic will increase in years spent taking statins, antihypertensives, and antidepressants. There are additionally vital variations in prescription drug use by race and ethnicity: non-Hispanic Whites take probably the most, Hispanics take the least, and non-Hispanic Blacks fall in between these extremes. Individuals are taking medication over a large and increasing swathe of the life course, a testomony to the centrality of pharmaceuticals in Individuals’ lives in the present day.
Hat tip to Kevin Lewis.
