Recent minimum wage policies and their association with suicide and poisoning deaths

US life expectancy declined after 2014 amid rising drug-poisoning and suicide mortality. We assessed whether recent, large statutory minimum-wage increases affected these outcomes. Using 2010-2019 National Vital Statistics System mortality data, we analyzed adults aged 25 and up and exploited cross-state adoption and differential exposure by education (no college versus at least some college) in a triple-differences framework. To address staggered adoption and treatment heterogeneity, we implemented a two-stage imputation estimator. We studied deaths per capita for poisonings, drug overdoses, opioid-related overdoses, and suicides. Twenty-six states (including Washington, D.C.) enacted statutory minimum wage increases while 25 did not. Pre-treatment placebo estimates show little evidence of systematic pre-existing trends that would confound the results. Average post-treatment mortality effects associated with minimum wage increases are generally small: poisonings -0.9% (95% CI -6.8%, +5.0%); suicides -1.0% (-7.5%, +5.5%); overdoses +0.5% (-5.2%, +6.2%); opioid-involved overdoses -2.8% (-10.2%, +4.6%). When restricting to states with 50% statutory hikes or higher, we reach similar conclusions. At magnitudes observed during 2010-2019, minimum-wage increases had, at most, modest effects on deaths of despair and are unlikely to meaningfully reduce drug overdose or suicide mortality in the medium term.