Unemployment could be health hazard

05:55 AM May 12, 2009

LOSING your job may make you sick, according to new research findings released last week.

A researcher at the Harvard School of Public analysed detailed employment and health data from 8,125 individuals surveyed in 1999, 2001 and 2003 by the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

Workers who lost a job through no fault of their own were twice as likely to report developing a new ailment such as high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease over the next year and a half, compared to people who were continuously employed.

Interestingly, the risk was just as high for those who found new jobs quickly as it was for those who remained unemployed.

Though it's long been known that poor health and unemployment often go together, questions have lingered about whether unemployment triggers illness, or whether people in ill health are more likely to leave a job, be fired or laid off.

In an attempt to sort out this chicken-or-egg problem, the new study looked specifically at people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own - for example, because of a business closure.

"I was looking at situations in which people lost their job for reasons that ... shouldn't have had anything to do with their health," said author Kate W Strully, an assistant professor of sociology at State University of New York in Albany, who did the research as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health.

"What happens isn't reflecting a prior condition," she added.

Only six per cent of people with steady jobs developed a new health condition during each survey period of about a year and a half, compared with 10 per cent of those who had lost a job during the same period.

It did not matter whether the laid off workers had found new employment. They still had a one in 10 chance of developing a new health condition, Dr Strully found. The New York Times

From TODAY, Health – Tuesday, 12-May-2009

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