VENICE – Cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, operating heavy machinery, carrying out agricultural work, and performing repair and maintenance tasks: these are some of the activities that new research associates with poorer health later in life. The study reconstructs the employment histories of almost 65,000 people across 27 European countries and Israel and proposes an index to assess the physical burden of work based on the tasks involved in each occupation.
The research, published in the Journal of Population Economics, is by Giacomo Pasini, Professor of Econometrics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Petru Crudu of the University of Innsbruck, a former PhD student at Ca’ Foscari. Its main finding is an association between the physical intensity of work performed over the course of a person’s career and their health after the age of 50. This association remains significant even after accounting for childhood circumstances, socioeconomic characteristics and lifestyle factors.
“Health also carries the imprint of the work we have done,” explains Pasini. To investigate this relationship, the authors used data from SHARE, the European initiative that regularly collects data on the health, ageing and retirement of people aged over 50 in Europe. The sample comprises 64,795 people across 27 European countries and Israel. Each occupation was assigned a physical intensity indicator.
People who performed more physically demanding work over the course of their careers were more frequently diagnosed with heart attacks, strokes and chronic lung diseases. Diabetes and hypertension also tended to be diagnosed at a younger age. For several health outcomes, the association between physical strain at work and poorer health was stronger among women.
One of the study’s original contributions lies in its detailed analysis of individual tasks. The research starts from 302 categories of tasks associated with different occupations. A statistical method was used to identify the tasks most strongly associated with poorer self-reported health. Those that emerged most clearly include cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, operating heavy machinery, agricultural work, and repair and maintenance activities.
The 67 activities selected also include tasks involving physical assistance to people such as helping them wash and dress, unloading lorries, carrying heavy objects, electrical work, and construction and restoration work. These examples show how tasks associated with poorer health outcomes can occur across a range of occupations and sectors.
On this basis, the researchers developed the Job Strain Intensity index. For each occupation, the index measures the weight of tasks associated with poorer health outcomes. This approach provides a more precise description of the content of different jobs and may help identify areas in which prevention, workplace safety and the organisation of work could be targeted.
The findings also provide evidence relevant to the debate on health inequalities and pension policies. “Chronological age is the same for everyone; the burden of a lifetime’s work is not,” Pasini observes. Taking differences in employment histories into account could help design protection measures that are more responsive to people’s health as they approach the final stages of their careers.
The authors emphasise that the study identifies statistical associations and does not allow the effect of working conditions on health to be established with certainty as causal. However, the relationship with physical intensity remains robust across numerous checks and when different health indicators are used.
The research was funded by the European Union through NextGenerationEU as part of the NRRP project Age-It – Ageing well in an ageing society. Petru Crudu also received support from the Austrian Science Fund.