Abstract
In this paper, we use a longitudinal survey that has collected information for 50 years on a large cohort of Wisconsin high school graduates and their siblings to examine the long term impact of early occupational choice on health status. We find evidence that beginning a career in a blue collar occupation is correlated with several measures of poor health outcomes at ages 50–65. Since our dataset includes usually unobserved pre-labor market characteristics, including IQ and childhood health status, we can show that controlling for these variables is important for many results and suggests a high level of selection into occupation based on health and ability. We also provide evidence of gender differentials in the association between first occupation and later health. Then, we replace our basic measure of occupational categories with summary measures of job characteristics and find that employment at “bad jobs” at the beginning of an individual’s career predicts later health outcomes. Finally, we use sibling information in the dataset to show that unmeasured family background factors explain a large share of the effects of occupation on later health. Overall, the evidence points to limited, though heterogeneous, long term effects of health from blue collar employment.
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Notes
Several broad categories of choices made as an adolescent or young adult have also been found to affect long-term health outcomes. Health habits such as smoking, drinking alcohol, and using drugs usually begin during adolescence and have been shown to be correlated with later health habit choices and health outcomes (e.g. Gruber 2001; Williams 2005). Educational attainment is also an important choice made as a young adult that has been shown to be one of the single most important correlates with health throughout the life course (Cutler and Lleras-Muney 2006; see also Lleras-Muney 2005; Fletcher and Frisvold 2009).
A separate literature has examined whether employment interruptions, such as job displacement, has health consequences (e.g. Sullivan and von Wachter 2009).
See Smith (2009) for evidence that retrospective measures of childhood health are useful proxies for pre-labor market health.
The NLS begins when individuals are ages 45–55 and collects retrospective information on occupation and has limited pre-market controls. The PSID started collecting health information in 1984, relies on long retrospective windows, and has relatively small sample sizes of elderly individuals with complete information.
For example, Currie and Stabile (2006) and Fletcher and Wolfe (2008) using sibling fixed effects models to examine the effects of childhood ADHD on education outcomes. Fletcher (2009; 2010) uses sibling fixed effects to examine the association between adolescent depression and educational outcomes and labor market outcomes, respectively.
The WLS handbooks states that among Americans aged 50 to 54 in 1990 and 1991, approximately 66% were non-Hispanic white persons who completed at least 12 years of schooling. Some strata of American society are not well represented in the WLS. The WLS sample is mainly of German, English, Irish, Scandinavian, Polish, or Czech ancestry. It is estimated that about 75% of Wisconsin youth graduated from high school in the late 1950s—everyone in the primary WLS sample graduated from high school; about 7% of their siblings did not graduate from high school. Minorities are not well-represented.
Full information can be found online: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/
Importantly, we include results in the appendix that show that our baseline results are similar for the full sample and the analysis sample.
Dropping missing data on childhood health status would decrease our sample by over 600.
The IQ measure is from the raw Henmon-Nelson test score taken in 1957 for graduates and 1977 for siblings.
Respondents are asked “How would you rate your health as a child?” in the 2003–2007 survey rounds. Potential responses include “poor”, “fair”, “good”, “very good”, and “excellent”. See Smith (2009) for evidence that this type of retrospective reporting of childhood health is useful.
First occupation refers to the 1970 Census detailed occupation code for first full-time civilian job after leaving school for the last time. Blue collar occupations include: Craftsman, Operative, Service, Farmer, Laborer. White collar occupations include: Professional, Manager, Clerical, and Sales.
In the appendix (Table 8), we show that the effects of blue collar occupation differ by gender. In particular, blue collar occupation increases arthritis for males by 8.6 percentage points and for females by 5.4 percentage points.
In auxiliary analyses, we also examined potential mechanisms that might explain the lack of significant results in the main tables. We estimated models that controlled for current employment status, occupation, income, and marital status in part to understand whether there were any detectable effects that may offset any physical harm to health, for example though income effects from dangerous jobs. In results available upon request, we find no difference after these controls are added. We thank an anonymous reviewer for the suggestion.
In appendix Table 11, we find that the relationship between bad jobs and poor health status is larger for women (2.6 percentage points) than men (1.8 percentage points).
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Acknowledgment
This work was supported by Grant Number R01AG027045 from the National Institute on Aging. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Aging or the National Institutes of Health. “The author thanks anonymous reviewers, the editor, and Jody Sindelar for helpful comments.”
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This research uses data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 1991, the WLS has been supported principally by the National Institute on Aging (AG-9775 and AG-21079), with additional support from the Vilas Estate Trust, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A public use file of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study is available from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706 and at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/data/. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author.
Appendix
Appendix
PAIN Index
1 Free of pain and discomfort.
2 Mild to moderate pain that prevents no activities.
3 Moderate pain that prevents a few activities.
4 Moderate to severe pain that prevents some activities.
5 Severe pain that prevents most activities.
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Fletcher, J.M. The Effects of First Occupation on Long Term Health Status: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. J Labor Res 33, 49–75 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-011-9121-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-011-9121-x