The Wear and Tear on Health: What is the Role of Occupation?

Ravesteijn, Bastian and van Kippersluis, Hans and van Doorslaer, Eddy (2013): The Wear and Tear on Health: What is the Role of Occupation?

Abstract

Although it seems evident that occupation affects health, effect estimates are scarce. We use a job characteristics matrix linked to German longitudinal data spanning 26 years to characterise occupations by their physical and psychosocial burdens. Employing a dynamic model to control for factors that simultaneously affect health and selection into occupation, we find that manual work and low job control both have a substantial negative effect on health that gets stronger with age. The effects of late-career exposure to high physical demands and low job control are comparable to a health deterioration due to ageing 12 and 19 months, respectively.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Health, labor, dynamic panel data
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C2 - Single Equation Models ; Single Variables > C23 - Panel Data Models ; Spatio-temporal Models; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I0 - General; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J0 - General

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