Occupational Status and Health Transitions

G. Brant Morefield, David Ribar and Christopher Ruhm

No 11-4, UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics

Abstract: We use longitudinal data from the 1984 through 2007 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine how occupational status is related to the health transitions of 30 to 59 year-old U.S. males. A recent history of blue-collar employment predicts a substantial increase in the probability of transitioning from very good into bad self-assessed health, relative to white-collar employment, but with no evidence of occupational differences in movements from bad to very good health. These findings are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses. The results suggest that blue-collar workers “wear out” faster with age because they are more likely, than their white-collar counterparts, to experience negative health shocks. This partly reflects differences in the physical demands of blue-collar and white-collar jobs.

Keywords: occupations; physical demands; health; PSID (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2011-02-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://bryan.uncg.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/11-04.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: Occupational Status and Health Transitions (2012)
Working Paper: Occupational Status and Health Transitions (2011)
Working Paper: Occupational Status and Health Transitions (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:uncgec:2011_004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics UNC Greensboro, Department of Economics, PO Box 26170, Bryan Building 462, Greensboro, NC 27402. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Albert Link ().