Adverse Employment Histories, Later Health Functioning and National Labor Market Policies: European Findings Based on Life-History Data From SHARE and ELSA

Lifetime employment trajectories and cancer

Working life is associated with lifestyle, screening uptake, and occupational health risks that may explain differences in cancer onset. To better understand the association between working life and cancer risk, we need to account for the entire employment history. We investigated whether lifetime employment trajectories are associated with cancer risk. We used data from 6809 women and 5716 men, average age 70 years, from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe. Employment history from age 16 to 65 was collected retrospectively using a life calendar and trajectories were constructed using sequence analysis. Associations between employment trajectories and self-reported cancer were assessed using logistic regression. We identified eight employment trajectories for women and two for men. Among women, the risk of cancer was higher in the trajectories "Mainly full-time to home/family", "Full-time or home/family to part-time", "Mainly full-time", and "Other" compared with the "Mainly home/family" trajectory. Among men, the risk of cancer was lower in the "Mainly self-employment" trajectory compared with "Mainly full-time". We could show how employment trajectories were associated with cancer risk, underlining the potential of sequence analysis for life course epidemiology. More research is needed to understand these associations and determine if causal relationships exist.

Cumulative Unionization and Physical Health Disparities among Older Adults

Whereas previous research shows that union membership is associated with improved health, static measurements have been used to test dynamic theories linking the two. We construct a novel measure of cumulative unionization, tracking individuals across their entire careers, to examine health consequences in older adulthood. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1970-2019) and predict self-rated health, functional limitations, and chronic health conditions in ages 60 to 79 using cumulative unionization measured during respondents' careers. Results from growth models show that unionized careers are associated with .25 SD to .30 SD improvements in health among older adults across all measures. Analyses of life course mechanisms reveal heterogeneous effects across unionization timing, age in older adulthood, and birth cohort. Moreover, subgroup analyses reveal unionization to partially, but not fully, ameliorate disparities based on privileged social positions. Our findings reveal a substantial and novel mechanism driving older adulthood health disparities.

Lifetime Employment Trajectories and Cancer: A Population-Based Cohort Study

Working life is associated with lifestyle, screening uptake, and occupational health risks that may explain differences in cancer onset. To better understand the association between working life and cancer risk, we need to account for the entire employment history. We investigated whether lifetime employment trajectories are associated with cancer risk. We used data from 6,809 women and 5,716 men, average age 70 years, from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe. Employment history from age 16 to 65 was collected retrospectively using a life calendar and trajectories were constructed using sequence analysis. Associations between employment trajectories and self-reported cancer were assessed using logistic regression. We identified eight employment trajectories for women and two for men. Among women, the risk of cancer was higher in the trajectories "Mainly full-time to home/family", "Full-time or home/family to part-time", "Mainly full-time", and "Other" compared with the "Mainly home/family" trajectory. Among men, the risk of cancer was lower in the "Mainly self-employment" trajectory compared with "Mainly full-time". We could show how employment trajectories were associated with cancer risk, underlining the potential of sequence analysis for life course epidemiology. More research is needed to understand these associations and determine if causal relationships exist.

Regional differences in annual prevalence of sustainable working life in Swedish twin cohort

The global rise in life expectancy transforms age structure consequently having impact to the sustainability of social protection systems and working life. This descriptive study aimed to illustrate the annual prevalence of sustainable working life across Swedish residential regions, and investigate differences between age groups, sex, or being identical or fraternal twin. The study sample included 81,231 twins with linkage to national register data on sickness absence, disability pension, unemployment, and residential regions. Regions were classified by Swedish municipalities into nine groups. Sustainable working life were then followed in 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013. Annual prevalence and Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) with log linear models for interaction test were used. Medium to large size municipalities (15-24%) had higher annual prevalence of sustainable working life than smaller municipalities (1-7%). Young adults in medium to large size municipalities had high annual prevalence of sustainable working life. We found no differences for sexes or being identical or fraternal twin. To conclude, annual prevalence of sustainable working life in 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013 differed by region being highest in medium to large size municipalities which may have importance for targeting policies, regulations, and practices in a region-specific way. Further studies on residential regions and sustainable working life would be merited to confirm associations and other influential factors.

Childhood Socioeconomic Position, Adulthood Employment Trajectories, and Later Life Functional Limitations in Chile

Relying on a life course perspective, we explored the association between childhood socioeconomic position (SEP), adulthood employment trajectories, and their interactions, with different domains of functional limitations among older people in Chile. We used data from a face-to-face, comprehensive and representative life history survey of older people (N = 802), and weighted bivariate, multivariate, and longitudinal quantitative methods. As a way to address potential problems of reverse causality, we adjust multivariate analyses by lifetime health indicators. Our results show that low childhood SEP and non-standard adulthood employment trajectories characterized by part-time work negatively affect later life functional limitations. The increased risk among people with low childhood SEP is higher if they follow a "part-time employment trajectory" in adulthood. In the conclusion, we emphasize that analyzing life course determinants of functional limitations serves to inform and help design strategies to reduce dependency in later life and promote healthy aging.

Early retirement intentions: the impact of employment biographies, work stress and health among a baby-boomer generation

In recent years, early retirement decisions have become more frequent in the European Union despite political efforts to prevent early retirement. This is a growing problem for the social security system. The study focuses on a life course approach using employment biographies and investigates the influence of work stress and health on early retirement intentions. Data of employees who were born in either 1959 or 1965 of the German cohort study on work, age, health and work participation are analysed (n = 3338). By linking survey and register data from 1993 to 2011, a sequence analysis is conducted to identify employment biographies. To analyse the relationship between the employment biographies and intended early retirement, a longitudinal path analysis is computed and includes work stress, measured through effort-reward imbalance, and self-rated health. The statistical analyses identify three adverse employment biographies, i.e. part-time work, episodes of unemployment or marginal employment. In addition, two favourable employment biographies are determined, characterised by full-time work and few episodes of unemployment. The results of the path analysis show that employment biographies with high work-related stress have early retirement intentions. Among adverse employment biographies, indirect effects of poor health on the association between work stress and early retirement intentions are found. Unexpectedly, among full-time workers, work stress is also associated with early retirement intentions with an additional mediation through health. The findings of this study highlight the importance of the life course perspective when analysing retirement decisions. In addition to health-promoting interventions in the labour market, effects of psychosocial factors should be focussed on in order to reduce early exits from the labour market.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10433-022-00731-0.

Adulthood Employment Trajectories and Later Life Mental Health before and after the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

BACKGROUND

This life course study has two aims. First, to explore how diverse employment trajectories across adulthood are related to older people's mental health in Chile, a country with no research in this field, and second, to analyze these associations before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

We use data from the nationally-representative and longitudinal 'Chilean Social Protection Survey' sequence analysis to reconstruct employment trajectory types, and bivariate and multivariate analyses to measure their association with depressive symptoms.

RESULTS

Our findings indicate that formal labor force patterns in adulthood show the lowest burden of depressive symptomology before and after the onset of the overwhelming COVID-19 pandemic when controlling for traditional risk factors.

CONCLUSION

We emphasize that policymakers in both the labor market and public health domains must consider the relationship between informal employment pathways in adulthood and poorer mental health in old age. Public policies should improve the conditions and quality of jobs during adulthood and promote more formalization in the labor market to address the high uncertainty involving low social protection, which is strongly associated with severe mental health problems in later life.

Employment Management Policies for College Graduates under COVID-19 in China: Diffusion Characteristics and Core Issues

The outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic has been having a great impact on the job market, so that graduates from all over the world are facing a more complex employment environment. Unemployment of the educated labor force often results in a waste of human capital and leads to serious economic and social problems. In the face of the impact of COVID-19, the Chinese government quickly introduced a series of employment policies for college graduates to relieve their employment pressure and create opportunities of career development. How did these employment policies for college graduates spread rapidly under the unconventional state of the COVID-19 epidemic? What are the diffusion characteristics? What are the core issues and measures? What are the differences between governments at all levels? These problems with rich connotation and research value needed to be further clarified. Based on the 72 employment support policies collected from the Chinese government network, this paper conducted a text analysis of the policies and found that in the process dimension, the employment policies of college graduates accumulated and exploded from bottom to top in the short term, and the policies diffusion followed the gradual model of “east–middle–west”. In the content dimension, there were five core issues: financial subsidies, innovation and entrepreneurship to drive employment, public institutions to absorb, optimizing public services, and lowering the support threshold. Meanwhile, there were obvious differences in the choice of policy tools, policy intensity, and implementation ideas in each region. The findings are of important significance for developed and developing countries to better respond to the impact of various emergency situations.

Technology-induced job loss risk, disability and all-cause mortality in Norway

Background

Ongoing shifts in economic structure from automation and globalisation can affect employment and mortality, yet these relations are not well described.

Objective

We assess whether long-term employment and health outcomes relate systematically to structural change in the labour market, using the occupational Routine Task Intensity (RTI) score as indicator of exposure is to risks of outsourcing and technology-induced job loss.

Methods

Using a cohort design and administrative data with national population coverage, we categorise all Norwegian employees in 2003 by the RTI score of their occupation and examine how this score correlates with employment and health outcomes measured in 2018 and 2019. The study sample counts 416 003 men and 376 413 women aged 33–52 in 2003.

Results

The occupational RTI score at baseline is robustly associated with long-term employment, disability and mortality outcomes. Raw correlations are reduced after adjustment for potential confounders, but associations remain substantial in models controlling for individual covariates and in sibling comparisons. Working in an occupation with RTI score 1 SD above the mean in 2003 is associated with a raised probability of being deceased in 2019 of 0.24 percentage points (95% CI: 0.18 to 0.30) for men and 0.13 percentage points (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.24) for women, corresponding to raised mortality rates of 6.7% and 5.5%.

Conclusions

Individuals in occupations characterised by high routine intensity are less likely to remain employed in the long term, and have higher rates of disability and mortality.