Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T19:25:31.170Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Health and occupation: the limits to older adults' work hours

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2022

Tinh Doan Open the ORCID record for Tinh Doan [Opens in a new window] ,
Christine Labond ,
Amelia Yazidjoglou ,
Perri Timmins ,
Peng Yu  and
Lyndall Strazdins
Tinh Doan
Affiliation:
Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Christine Labond
Affiliation:
Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Amelia Yazidjoglou
Affiliation:
Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Perri Timmins
Affiliation:
Safe Work Australia, Canberra, Australia
Peng Yu
Affiliation:
Australian Commonwealth Department of Social Services, Canberra, Australia
Lyndall Strazdins*
Affiliation:
Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Lyndall.strazdins@anu.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

More people are working into older age, raising questions about how many hours they can work before their health becomes compromised. This paper models work-hour tipping points for mental health and vitality among older Australian workers aged 50–70 years. We use longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, 2005–2016 (about 44,900 observations), and bootstrapping Three Stage Least Squares (3SLS) estimation techniques to adjust for reverse and reciprocal relationships between wages, work hours and health. Our approach corrects for heteroscedasticity in the system equation error terms, and we estimate models on the relatively healthy older adults who have remained employed into older age. Among these older workers we observe weekly thresholds of 39–40 hours beyond which mental health and vitality decline. This average, however, hides variability in work-hour limits linked to overall health and occupation. Thus, weekly tipping points for blue- and pink-collar jobs are 7–9 hours lower compared to white-collar jobs, and even wider gaps (11 hours) are apparent for workers with poorer physical functioning, which becomes common as people age. Our modelling reveals that age is not the biggest limiting factor for how many hours older adults can work, rather their health and the types of jobs are critical, and likely widen the gap in who ages successfully or not.

Keywords

older workerswork hour–health limitmental healthvitalitylabour market outcomes
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , April 2024 , pp. 743 - 771
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amagasa, T and Nakayama, T (2013) Relationship between long working hours and depression: a 3-year longitudinal study of clerical workers. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 55, 863–872.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arellano, M and Honore, B (2001) Panel data models: some recent developments. In James, H and Edward, L (eds), Handbook of Econometrics. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 3229–3296.Google Scholar
Arpino, B and Bordone, V (2018) Active ageing typologies: a latent class analysis of the older Europeans. In Zaidi, A, Harper, S, Howse, K, Lamura, G and Perek-Bialas, J (eds). Building Evidence for Active Ageing Policies: Active Ageing Index and its Potential. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 295–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bannai, A and Tamakoshi, A (2014) The association between long working hours and health: a systematic review of epidemiological evidence. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health 40, 5–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, C, Schaffer, M and Stillman, S (2003) Instrumental variables and GMM: estimation and testing. Stata Journal 3, 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benzeval, M, Green, MJ and Leyland, A (2011) Do social inequalities in health widen or converge with age? Longitudinal evidence from three cohorts in the West of Scotland. BMC Public Health 11, 947.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buck, D and Maguire, D (2015) Inequalities in Life Expectancy Changes Over Time and Implications for Policy. Available at https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/files/field/field_publication_file/inequalities-in-life-expectancy-kings-fund-aug15.pdf.Google Scholar
Butterworth, P, Leach, L, McManus, S and Stansfeld, S (2013) Common mental disorders, unemployment and psychosocial job quality: is a poor job better than no job at all? Psychological Medicines 43, 1763–1772.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costa, G and Sartori, S (2007) Ageing, working hours and work ability. Ergonomics 50, 1914–1930.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crystal, S, Shea, G and Reyes, M (2017) Cumulative advantage, cumulative disadvantage, and evolving patterns of late-life inequality. The Gerontologist 57, 910–920.Google ScholarPubMed
Daley, J and Woods, D (2014) The Wealth of Generations (Report No. 2014-13). Grattan Institute. Available at https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/820-wealth-of-generations.pdf.Google Scholar
Dembe, E, Erickson, B, Delbos, G and Banks, M (2005) The impact of overtime and long work hours on occupational injuries and illnesses: new evidence from the United States. Occupational & Environmental Medicine 62, 588–597.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dinh, H, Strazdins, L and Welsh, J (2017) Hour-glass ceilings: work-hour thresholds, gendered health inequalities. Social Science & Medicine 176, 42–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doan, T, Strazdins, L and Leach, L (2020) Cost of poor health to the labour market returns to education in Australia: another pathway for socio-economic inequality. European Journal of Health Economics 21, 635–648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dooley, D (2003) Unemployment, underemployment, and mental health: conceptualizing employment status as a continuum. American Journal of Community Psychology 32, 9–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dooley, D and Prause, J (2009) The Social Costs of Underemployment: Inadequate Employment as Disguised Unemployment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dooley, D, Prause, J and Ham-Rowbottom, K (2000) Underemployment and depression: longitudinal relationships. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 41, 421–436.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eurofound (2017) Sixth European Working Conditions Survey – Overview Report (2017 Update). Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar
Finlay, K, Magnusson, M and Schaffer, E (2013) Weakiv: Weak-instrument-robust Tests and Confidence Intervals for Instrumental-variable (IV) Estimation of Linear, Probit and Tobit Models. Available at http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s457684.html.Google Scholar
Grossman, M and Benham, L (1974) Health, hours and wages. In Perlman, M (ed). The Economics of Health and Medical Care (International Economic Association Series). London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 205–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halleröd, B and Gustafsson, J (2011) A longitudinal analysis of the relationship between changes in socio-economic status and changes in health. Social Science & Medicine 72, 116–123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haveman, R, Wolfe, B, Kreider, B and Stone, M (1994) Market work, wages, and men's health. Journal of Health Economics 13, 163–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hemingway, H, Nicholson, A, Roberts, R, Stafford, M and Marmot, M (1997) The impact of socioeconomic status on health functioning as assessed by the SF-36: the Whitehall II study. American Journal of Public Health 87, 1484–1490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
International Labour Organization (ILO) (2011) Working Time in the Twenty-first Century: Discussion Report for the Tripartite Meeting of Experts on Working-time Arrangements, 17–21 October 2011. Geneva: International Labour Office.Google Scholar
Kachan, D, Fleming, LE, Christ, S, Muennig, P, Prado, G, Tannenbaum, SL, Yang, X, Caban-Martinez, AJ and Lee, DJ (2015) Health status of older US workers and nonworkers, National Health Interview Survey, 1997–2011. Preventing Chronic Disease 12, E162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karsten, P and Klaus, M (2009) Unemployment impairs mental health: meta-analyses. Journal of Vocational Behaviour 74, 264–282.Google Scholar
Kim, H and DeVaney, A (2005) The selection of partial or full retirement by older workers. Journal of Family and Economic Issues 26, 371–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleiner, S and Pavalko, K (2010) Clocking in: the organization of work time and health in the United States. Social Forces 88, 1463–1486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kröger, H, Pakpahan, E and Hoffmann, R (2015) What causes health inequality? A systematic review on the relative importance of social causation and health selection. European Journal of Public Health 25, 951–960.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, J and Lee, K (2016) Can working hour reduction save workers? Labour Economics 40, 25–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lepinteur, A (2019) The shorter workweek and worker wellbeing: evidence from Portugal and France. Labour Economics 58, 204–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marmot, M, Smith, G, Stansfeld, S, Patel, C, North, F, Head, J, White, I, Brunner, E and Feeney, A (1991) Health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall II study. The Lancet 337, 1387–1393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marmot, M, Bosma, H, Hemingway, H, Brunner, E and Stansfeld, S (1997) Contribution of job control and other risk factors to social variations in coronary heart disease incidence. The Lancet 350, 235–239.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matthews, D and Weaver, N (1996) Comparison of perceived job security of college professors versus white-collar and blue-collar workers. Psychological Reports 79, 367–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonough, P and Amick, B III (2001). The social context of health selection: a longitudinal study of health and employment. Social Science & Medicine 53, 135–145.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Medic, G, Wille, M and Hemels, ME (2017) Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption. Nature and Science of Sleep 9, 151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milner, A, Smith, P and LaMontagne, A (2015) Working hours and mental health in Australia: evidence from an Australian population-based cohort, 2001–2012. Occupational & Environmental Medicine 72, 573–579.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Milner, A, King, L, LaMontagne, A, Aitken, Z, Petrie, D and Kavanagh, M (2017) Underemployment and its impacts on mental health among those with disabilities: evidence from the HILDA cohort. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 71, 1198–1202.Google ScholarPubMed
Mincer, J (1974) Schooling, Experience, and Earnings. New York, NY: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Nyland, C (1990) Capitalism and the history of work-time thought. In Hassard, J. (ed.), The Sociology of Time. New York, NY: Springer, pp. 130–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neill, OA and O'Reilly, C (2010) Careers as tournaments: the impact of sex and gendered organizational culture preferences in MBA's income attainment. Journal of Organizational Behaviour 31, 856–876.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Reilly, D and Rosato, M (2013) Worked to death? A census-based longitudinal study of the relationship between the numbers of hours spent working and mortality risk. International Journal of Epidemiology 42, 1820–1830.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2016) Historical Population Data and Projections (1950–2050). Available at https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=POP_PROJ#.Google Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2017 a) Health at a Glance 2017: OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Pit, S, Shrestha, R, Schofield, D and Passey, M (2013) Partial and complete retirement due to ill-health among mature age Australians. Public Health 127, 561–571.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ravesteijn, B, van Kippersluis, H and van Doorslaer, E (2018) The wear and tear on health: what is the role of occupation? Health Economics 27, 69–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Riley, W and Riley, W (1994) Age integration and the lives of older people. The Gerontologist 34, 110–115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rowe, J and Kahn, R (1997) Successful ageing. The Gerontologist 37, 433–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, J and Kahn, R (2015) Successful aging 2.0: conceptual expansions for the 21st century. Journals of Gerontology: Series B 70, 593–596.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schreuder, J, Roelen, A, Koopmans, C and Groothoff, W (2008) Job demands and health complaints in white and blue collar workers. Work 31, 425–432.Google ScholarPubMed
Sparks, K, Cooper, C, Fried, Y and Shirom, A (1997) The effects of hours of work on health: a meta-analytic review. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 70, 391–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Subhasree, R (2018) Effect of health on retirement of older Americans: a competing risks study. Journal of Labor Research 39, 56–98.Google Scholar
Summerfield, M (2011) HILDA User Manual – Release 9. Melbourne: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research, University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Taskila, T, Shreeve, V, Laghini, M and Bevan, S (2015) Living Long, Working Well: Supporting Older Workers with Health Conditions to Remain Active at Work. London: The Work Foundation.Google Scholar
Virtanen, M, Ferrie, JE, Singh-Manoux, A, Shipley, MJ, Stansfeld, SA, Marmot, MG, Ahola, K, Vahtera, J and Kivimäki, M (2011) Long working hours and symptoms of anxiety and depression: a 5-year follow-up of the Whitehall II study. Psychological Medicine 41, 2485–2494.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagenaar, F, Kompier, A, Houtman, L, van den Bossche, N and Taris, W (2012) Employment contracts and health selection: unhealthy employees out and healthy employees in? Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 54, 1192–1200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ware, J (2000) SF-36 health survey update. Spine 25, 3130–3139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Welsh, J, Strazdins, L, Charlesworth, S and Kulik, C (2016) Health or harm? A cohort study of the importance of job quality in extended workforce participation by older adults. BMC Public Health 16, 1–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
West, P (1991) Rethinking the health selection explanation for health inequalities. Social Science & Medicine 32, 373–384.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zaidi, A, Gasior, K, Hofmarcher, M, Lelkes, O, Marin, B, Rodrigues, R, Schmidt, A, Vanhuysse, P and Zolyomi, E (2013) Active Ageing Index 2012: Concept, Methodology and Final Results. Vienna: European Centre.Google Scholar
Zellner, A and Theil, H (1962) Three-stage least squares: simultaneous estimation of simultaneous equations. Econometrica 30, 54–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Doan et al. supplementary material

Doan et al. supplementary material
Download Doan et al. supplementary material(File)
File 106.1 KB