The ‘healthy worker effect’: Do healthy people climb the occupational ladder?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The association between occupational status and health has been taken to reveal the presence of health inequalities shaped by occupational status. However, that interpretation assumes no influence of health status in explaining occupational standing. This paper documents evidence of non-negligible returns to occupation status on health (which we refer as 'healthy worker effect'). Terms of use: Documents inWe use a unique empirical strategy that addressed reverse causality, namely an instrumental variable strategy using the variation in average health in the migrant's country of origin, a health measure plausibly not determined by the migrant's occupational status. Our findings suggest that health status exerts significant effects on occupational status in several dimensions; having a supervising role, worker autonomy, and worker influence. The effect size of health is larger than that of an upper secondary education.JEL-Codes: J500, I180.

Desigualdades ocupacionais e diferenças de gênero: acidentes de trabalho, Brasil, 2019

“…Firstly, because the job market selects individuals with greater muscular capacity and sensory ability to occupy the most insecure and unhealthy positions. Those who have not suffered the effects of work exposure or the adverse events of life, generally younger, will have more opportunities in this type of selection process 24 , 25 . The so-called healthy worker effect expresses this selection bias, that is, those who lost the ability to face the demands of strength, vigilance, and agility did not “survive” in the job market, as they are sick or retired earlier 25 .…”

“…Those who have not suffered the effects of work exposure or the adverse events of life, generally younger, will have more opportunities in this type of selection process 24 , 25 . The so-called healthy worker effect expresses this selection bias, that is, those who lost the ability to face the demands of strength, vigilance, and agility did not “survive” in the job market, as they are sick or retired earlier 25 . Secondly, younger people have not yet had enough experience to develop self-protection skills, explaining, at least in part, the greater likelihood of WA in this age group 26 .…”

Do human capital investments mediate the intergenerational transmission of domestic violence?

“…Robust evidence indicates that IPV compromises parenting quality and ability in ways that may affect health, cognitive development, and schooling, all of which impact adult economic and labor outcomes and thus influence an individual's bargaining power and experience of IPV ( Costa-Font & Ljunge, 2018 ; Villa, 2017 ). Parental stress/depression can compromise parent's ability to invest in their children's mental, physical and educational well-being (e.g., Holt et al, 2008 ; Mangiavacchi & Piccoli, 2018 ).…”

What happens when working time is not recorded. Social policy lessons from a Swiss case study

“…This can be explained by the well-known Healthy Worker Effect (HWE) which indicates that workers occupying higher positions in the firm, i.e. those who are allowed not to record their working time or to record it in a simplified way, are also those who have a higher educational status and are the most able to cope with hard labour without detrimental health consequences; this indicates a selection bias in line with the well-known social gradient in health (Shah, 2009;Costa-Font and Ljunge, 2018). Thus, our figures do not allow identifying an unambiguous link between modalities of working time recording and health conditions of the respondents.…”