Work and health : working conditions, job requirements, individual habits, and sickness risk

• The starting point and motivation of our study are the effects of working conditions, job requirements, and personal habits on people’s health. Our hypothesis is that these effects do exist, and that, on average, employees exposed to either less friendly working conditions, higher job demands, or characterized by bad individual habits, will have longer sickness spells than their cohort peers who do not have the previous characteristics. Another hypothesis is that employees who are working in a friendly work environment, executing jobs that do not demand high physical efforts, etc. will have a better health and will work longer hours than their cohort peers who do not have these characteristics. These hypotheses are tested using a longitudinal database provided by the Swedish National Social Insurance Board (RFV), which contains high quality information on the duration of the sickness spells, earnings, and demographics from both RFV’s and the social insurance offices administrative registers. Both nonparametric and parametric estimates show that the work environment and job tasks, as well as the individual habits have a significant effect on people’s health. Therefore, we conclude that it is desirable to have programs directed to improve the social and physical work environment, jobs tasks, and individual performance (through training and/or vocational rehabilitation of those individuals). Nevertheless, given that the magnitude of the effects of the individual habits was relatively higher than the work environment and job’s tasks effects, it is difficult to suggest which social policy might be suitable to improve employees health in general. 

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Working conditions

job requirements

individual habits

and sickness risk

Economics

Nationalekonomi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)