Pink slips aren't rosy (Unemployment is bad for your health)

Washington Times ^ | 9/11/2009 | Alfred Tella

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Studies show that unemployment and the fear of unemployment are bad for workers' health.

Professor Kate Strully at Harvard's School of Public Health found in a recently published study that job loss can lead to heart disease, hypertension, stroke and diabetes. Frequent involuntary job changes also were found to be detrimental to the health of workers who were not already sick. For employees who were fired or laid off through no fault of their own, the increased risk of poorer health occurred mainly among blue-collar workers. The analysis was based on data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationwide representative survey.

Harvey Brenner, professor of public health and behavioral sciences at the University of North Texas, reported earlier this year on research in which he found that the stress of unemployment reduced life expectancy and increased mortality rates. Job loss often meant the loss of health benefits and the postponement of needed health care. Mr. Brenner noted that in the current economic recession, people seem to be dying sooner after their job loss than they did in earlier years.

A 2007 study by Daniel G. Sullivan at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Till von Wachter of Columbia University, published by the Chicago Fed, analyzed administrative data on employment and earnings that were matched to death records. They found that job displacement led to 15 percent to 20 percent increase in death rates for up to 20 years. "A worker displaced in midcareer can expect to live about two years less than a luckier counterpart."

Analyses of the impact of job insecurity on the health of the employed are even more disconcerting, only because there are many more millions of people with jobs than are unemployed. Working Americans currently outnumber the unemployed by 9 to 1.

[Red in Blue PA]

Studies show that unemployment and the fear of unemployment are bad for workers' health.

Paging Captain Obvious!