When shops were allowed to operate on Sundays in the USA, people started dying more

"Blue laws"

"Blue laws", laws prohibiting commerce on weekends, long made Sunday a special day. Most commercial activity was restricted, so people had fewer alternatives to church for weekend mornings.

After the US Supreme Court's decision in 1961, states gradually began to lift these restrictions. The process was not synchronous: some repealed them earlier, others later (for example, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Texas in 1985; North Dakota in 1991). The authors of the study used this "uneven" chronology as a natural experiment: if Sunday suddenly became a normal shopping day in some states, people's behavior should have changed, writes StudyFinds.

People started dying

According to researchers' estimates, after the repeal of Sunday restrictions, weekly church attendance among middle-aged people dropped by approximately 5-10% (the materials also cite an estimate of around 9%).

Simultaneously, the rate of so-called "deaths of despair" began to rise: deaths from suicides, drug poisonings (overdoses), and alcoholic liver diseases—by approximately 2 cases per 100,000 people. According to the authors' calculations, the suicide rate reacted most clearly, showing an increase of +1.2 per 100,000 points.

So, does shopping kill?

No, it's about something else. Religious communities often function as a network of daily support — they provide social connections, "informal insurance," and a sense of belonging. Researchers checked whether people replaced church with other forms of social life.

Павялічыць

It turned out they didn't: they didn't meet with friends and acquaintances more often, didn't join organizations or interest clubs, and didn't attend new events. After the repeal of "blue laws," people more often reported that they "sometimes drink too much," which could be another risk factor.

Why drugs are not involved

The authors specifically emphasize that their story begins before the explosion of the modern opioid crisis.

To avoid the influence of drug addiction, they analyze the period up to 2000, and in their calculations, they mark 1996 as the boundary (this is the year the easily accessible opioid OxyContin entered the market).

Who was most affected?

The review suggests that the decrease in church attendance in the 90s may partially explain the 17% increase in premature mortality observed until 1996 in the group of white Americans aged 45-64.

It is separately noted that these processes hit white middle-aged Americans without higher education the hardest – a group that reduced church attendance more than any other.

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