2017-09-13
The wear and tear on health: What is the role of occupation?
Publication
Publication
Health Economics , Volume 27 - Issue 2 p. e69- e86
Health is well known to show a clear gradient by occupation. Although it may appear evident that occupation can affect health, there are multiple possible sources of selection that can generate a strong association, other than simply a causal effect of occupation on health. We link job characteristics to German panel data spanning 29 years to characterize occupations by their physical and psychosocial burden. Employing a dynamic model to control for factors that simultaneously affect health and selection into occupation, we find that selection into occupation accounts for at least 60% of the association. The effects of occupational characteristics such as physical strain and low job control are negative and increase with age: late-career exposure to 1 year of high physical strain and low job control is comparable to the average health decline from ageing 16 and 6 months, respectively.
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| The Commonwealth Fund; the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, Grant/Award Number: 115621 ; European Union's Seventh Framework Program, Grant/Award Number: FP7/2007–2013 ; National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, Grant/Award Number: R01AG037398; NWO, Grant/Award Number: 016.145.082 | |
| doi.org/10.1002/hec.3563, hdl.handle.net/1765/102000 | |
| Health Economics | |
| Organisation | Erasmus School of Economics |
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Ravesteijn, B., van Kippersluis, H., & van Doorslaer, E. (2017). The wear and tear on health: What is the role of occupation?. Health Economics, 27(2), e69–e86. doi:10.1002/hec.3563 |
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