Working long hours may be related to obesity in older adults. No studies have focused on older workers and long work hours, although the risk of obesity is high among this population group. This study is the first attempt to investigate the relationship between obesity and the older workforce. Panel data from the Health and Retirement Study are examined using Cox regression techniques. We found that older workers who work more than 59 hr a week are more likely to gain weight than older workers who work less than 59 hr per week.

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Despite leveling off, United States is faced with high prevalence of obesity. Obesity epidemic is an important public health concern imposing pressures on social support schemes, leading to productivity losses and threatening quality of life of the people living with it. As occupations take up good portion of adult's daily life and have close relations with socio-economic factors and behavioral traits, understanding the relationships between occupations and obesity aids efforts fighting with the epidemic. In this respect, taking working hours into consideration, present study investigates the probability of being obese in 40 occupational groupings and identifies six occupation groups reducing the risk of obesity. This study is a first attempt to examine the effect of working hours on obesity by occupation groups in the United States.

Healthy aging is critical for the elderly to be independent and enjoy at least a satisfactory quality of life. However, late-life bereavement threatens healthy aging, as it may lead to adverse health effects. Using data from the Health and Retirement Survey, this study investigates the relationship between weight—specifically, body mass index (BMI)—and the loss of a parent, sibling, or spouse at an older age. It is the first attempt to investigate this relationship among the elderly population in the United States and makes the following notable contributions to the literature: (a) use of a large longitudinal dataset, (b) estimation of the effects of a familial death on a person’s BMI, and (c) investigation of the consequences of the bereavement for older people. Our results suggest that losing a family member at an older age results in a decrease in BMI.

The difference between the working hours of natives and immigrants has begun to attract a great deal of attention in U.S. migration research, but this phenomenon has yet to be studied in a European context. In this article, we examine this difference in working hours for 13 European countries