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Trajectories from Work to Early Exit from Paid Employment

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Handbook of Disability, Work and Health

Part of the book series: Handbook Series in Occupational Health Sciences ((HDBSOHS,volume 1))

Abstract

Work and health are closely related. Unemployed individuals have both a poorer physical and a poorer mental health compared to employed individuals. This chapter presents evidence for the two mechanisms underlying the associations between unemployment and poor health. The selection mechanisms state that poor health increases the likelihood of exit from paid employment. The causation mechanism posits that unemployment is a risk factor for poor health. Both mechanisms will play a role during working careers, and, thus, a working life perspective is advised to capture how health will influence working capacity over the work life and how paid employment will influence health during working age and thereafter. Vulnerable groups are identified that will experience difficulties in prolonging their working lives in good health. In the existing socioeconomic inequalities in health, the ability to have access to paid employment is a critical factor. Likewise, inequalities in health and underlying causes will have a profound impact in educational differences in labor market attainment. It is advised to further develop the working life perspective in new metrics, such as working life expectancy and working years lost, and in new methods to decompose these new metrics into underlying causes of loss of work capacity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Alex Burdorf & Suzan Robroek

Authors
  1. Alex Burdorf
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  2. Suzan Robroek
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alex Burdorf .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Sciences, Community and Occupational Medicine, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Ute Bültmann

  2. Centre for Health and Society, Faculty of Medicine, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Johannes Siegrist

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Burdorf, A., Robroek, S. (2020). Trajectories from Work to Early Exit from Paid Employment. In: Bültmann, U., Siegrist, J. (eds) Handbook of Disability, Work and Health. Handbook Series in Occupational Health Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24334-0_3

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