Washington - People like to groan about how their job is “killing” them.
Tragically, for some in the US, that statement appears to be true.
A study by researchers at Harvard and Stanford has quantified how much a stressful workplace may be shaving off lifespans. It suggests the amount lost to stress varies significantly for people of different races, educational levels and genders, and ranges up to nearly three years of life lost for some groups.
Past research has shown an incredible variation in life expectancy around the US, depending on who you are and where you live. Mapping life expectancy around the nation by residence and race, you can see that people in some parts of the US live as many as 33 years longer on average than people in other parts of the country, they say.
Those gaps appear to be getting worse, as the wealthy extend their lifespans and other groups are stagnant. One study found men and women with fewer than 12 years of education had life expectancies still on par with most adults in the 1950s and 1960s – suggesting the economic gains of the past few decades have gone mostly to more educated people. The financial crisis and subsequent recession, which put many people in economic jeopardy, may have worsened this.
There are lots of reasons that people with lower incomes and educations tend to have lower life expectancies: differences in access to health care, in exposure to air and water pollution, in nutrition and health-care early in life, and in behaviours, such as smoking, exercise and diet. Past research showed that job insecurity, long hours, heavy demands at work and other stresses can cut down on a worker’s life expectancy.
But researchers say this is the first study to look at the ways that a workplace’s influence on life expectancy specifically breaks down by racial and educational lines.
To do their analysis, they divided people into 18 different groups by race, education and sex. They looked at 10 different workplace factors – including unemployment and layoffs, the absence of health insurance, shift work, long working hours, job insecurity and work-family conflict – and estimated the effect each would have on annual mortality and life expectancy.
The data shows that people with less education are more likely to end up in jobs with more unhealthy workplace practices that cut down on one’s life span. People with the highest educational attainment were less affected by workplace stress, the study says.
Race and gender also played a role. Blacks and Hispanics lost more years of life because of work than whites did in every education and gender category. And women fared better than men, with one exception: educated Hispanic women lost significantly more of their life span to working conditions than educated Hispanic men did.
Some of the categories the researchers studied took a bigger toll than others. Across all groups, unemployment and layoffs, and a lack of health insurance were the factors that exerted the biggest influence. Low job control was the next for men and women, followed by job insecurity in men and shift work in women.
The researchers say their findings have a clear takeaway: we need to focus more on creating healthier work environments, especially for workers with less education.
The good news is that the way to accomplish this is straightforward. They suggest that many issues – including long hours and shift work, the lack of health insurance and paid time off, and job insecurity – can be partly solved through better policies to support workers.
Washington Post