As populations around the world age, governments are keen to find ways to enable workers to stay active and fit for longer. We know that work-related stress can lead to long-term health problems: but which types of employment records are particularly harmful, and how do the effects manifest over time? A new study by Morten Warrendorf, Tarani Chandola, and colleagues points to the need for early intervention with disadvantaged groups of workers.
Most studies of occupational stress focus on a specific point in time. But what if the effects of a turbulent working life accumulate over many years, in terms of adverse employment trajectories over a long period of time? Some workers experience frequent periods of unemployment throughout their working lives, for example. We wanted to know how different types of work history might be linked to health problems later in life.
We were able to examine these questions using data from the French CONSTANCES cohort study, which allowed us to combine information about participants’ employment history from ages 25-45 with information on health.
Can a stressful work life lead to health problems over a long period? To answer this question, we looked at a subsample of more than 90,000 people from the CONSTANCES study who were employed between the ages of 25 and 45, and who had not had to leave work or take a break due to ill health. During that period.
The information we included included how many temporary jobs participants held, how many job changes they had; How often have they been unemployed and how much time have they spent outside of work. We could also see what kind of job they had and whether or not they had a promotion – this enabled us to determine if they were experiencing job instability or other types of accumulated deprivation.
wear or tear
The study participants were also asked to fill out health questionnaires, undergo medical examinations, and take blood samples. This enabled us to calculate the ‘differential load’ (AL) – a biological measure of L wear and tear on the body (ie damage to the body) Which accumulates as an individual who is exposed to chronic stress throughout his working life. This is linked to long-term conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and depression.
In this study, we were able to include measures of a total of 10 components of the allograft, including blood pressure, lung function, waist-to-hip ratio, cholesterol levels, kidney function, fasting blood glucose, and the immune and inflammatory systems.
Men and women were considered separately and we were able to look at whether the participants were in a stable relationship as well as their level of education.
Our main findings were as follows:
Both men and women who experienced deprivation at work had a higher burden of variation: it was possible to measure the physical health effects associated with work stress. The burden of women having skilled or semi-skilled jobs was higher than that of managers or professionals. Both men and women suffer if they have been out of the labor force for six years or more.
– Men who were rejected for promotion had slightly higher scores, as did women who had a large number of temporary jobs.
- Frequent job moves were not associated with ill effects on health: this may be done for positive reasons such as a promotion.
- The effects remained even after we controlled for other occupational characteristics. They were the same for all of the different health indicators we looked at, with one exception: kidney function.
- The impact on health was particularly high for those who worked consistently in low-skill, high-stress types of work, with frequent or prolonged periods of unemployment.
distress
Our study indicates that people who experience adversity in their working lives over a prolonged period are more likely to suffer from long-term health conditions later in life. It stresses the importance of these links between chronic work stress and disease.
The potential benefits of promoting healthy working conditions, particularly among the most disadvantaged and in the early stages of their working lives, are evident from this study. The potential benefits would support both employees, in helping them stay healthy for longer, and employers, who could reduce rates of illness and retirement due to ill health.
Adverse employment history and differential load: Correlations across working life Written by Morten Warrendorf, Taranee Chandola, Marcel Goldberg, Mari Zane, Hanno Höfen and Johannes Siegrist and published in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
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