Lifecourse socioeconomic disadvantage, stressful working careers and health in older ages. An analysis of European data

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Morten Wahrendorf
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273662080

There is increasing recognition that socioeconomic disadvantage at earlier stages of the lifecourse can lead to poorer health and lower well-being in older ages. Yet, the question whether and to what extent this association can be attributed to health-adverse working conditions among people with disadvantaged socioeconomic circumstances is still debated. Therefore, this project investigates associations between socioeconomic disadvantage, stressful working conditions and health in older ages in a lifecourse perspective. Our main hypothesis is that men and women who have spent a larger amount of their lives in less advantaged socioeconomic circumstances were more likely to have particular stressful working careers (e.g. unstable histories, repeated exposure to a stressful work environment) with long-term consequences for health in older ages. In terms of socioeconomic circumstances we consider different stages of the life course, including childhood adversity, education (usually attained in early adulthood) and occupational position during working life. Key working conditions under study are repeated measures of psychosocial stress at work (as defined by the demand-control and the effort-reward imbalance models) together with detailed information on entire employment histories. This latter information will be analysed using sequence analyses to derive specific career characteristics (e.g. number and length of episodes of unemployment) and to regroup similar types of histories (e.g. continuous vs. unstable employment histories). In case of health in older ages we rely on standardized measures, covering mental and physical health together with quality of life in older ages. Analyses are based on two longitudinal studies, with nationally representative samples of adults aged 50 and older from 14 European countries: the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA), and the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Both surveys collected life history data among more than 25000 men and women, including socio-demographic factors, socioeconomic circumstances and health, thus offering a unique opportunity to conduct complex lifecourse analyses.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professor David Blane; Professor Tarani Chandola, Ph.D.
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Nico Dragano