IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v59y2004i7p1367-1378.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Job characteristics as mediators in SES-health relationships

Author

Listed:
  • Warren, John Robert
  • Hoonakker, Peter
  • Carayon, Pascale
  • Brand, Jennie

Abstract

We focus on physical and psychosocial job characteristics as mediators in the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and health. From sociological research on the stratification of employment outcomes we expect that people with less education, lower earnings, and lower levels of occupational standing have more physically and psychosocially demanding jobs. From the occupational stress, ergonomics, and job design literatures, we expect that people with more physically and psychosocially demanding jobs have less favorable health outcomes. Consequently, we expect to find that job characteristics play an important mediating role in associations between SES and self-assessed overall health and cardiovascular and musculoskeletal health problems. To address these hypotheses, we use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS). We find support for our hypotheses, although the extent to which job characteristics mediate SES-health relationships varies across health outcomes and by sex.

Suggested Citation

  • Warren, John Robert & Hoonakker, Peter & Carayon, Pascale & Brand, Jennie, 2004. "Job characteristics as mediators in SES-health relationships," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(7), pages 1367-1378, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:7:p:1367-1378
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00024-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jos Sanders & Luc Dorenbosch & Rob Gründemann & Roland Blonk, 2011. "Sustaining the Work Ability and Work Motivation of Lower-educated Older Workers: Directions for Work Redesign," management revue - Socio-Economic Studies, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 22(2), pages 132-150.
    2. Huisman, Martijn & Van Lenthe, Frank & Avendano, Mauricio & Mackenbach, Johan, 2008. "The contribution of job characteristics to socioeconomic inequalities in incidence of myocardial infarction," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(11), pages 2240-2252, June.
    3. Silvana Robone & Andrew Jones & Nigel Rice, 2011. "Contractual conditions, working conditions and their impact on health and well-being," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 12(5), pages 429-444, October.
    4. Hämmig, Oliver & Gutzwiller, Felix & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2014. "The contribution of lifestyle and work factors to social inequalities in self-rated health among the employed population in Switzerland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 74-84.
    5. Ragna Stalsberg & Arve Vorland Pedersen, 2018. "Are Differences in Physical Activity across Socioeconomic Groups Associated with Choice of Physical Activity Variables to Report?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-23, May.
    6. Karmakar, Sunita D. & Breslin, F. Curtis, 2008. "The role of educational level and job characteristics on the health of young adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 2011-2022, May.
    7. Meyer, S.C. & Künn-Nelen, A.C., 2014. "Do occupational demands explain the educational gradient in health?," Research Memorandum 016, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    8. Kristensen, Petter & Bjerkedal, Tor & Irgens, Lorentz M., 2007. "Early life determinants of musculoskeletal sickness absence in a cohort of Norwegians born in 1967-1976," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 646-655, February.
    9. Niedhammer, Isabelle & Chastang, Jean-François & David, Simone & Kelleher, Cecily, 2008. "The contribution of occupational factors to social inequalities in health: Findings from the national French SUMER survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 1870-1881, December.
    10. Lorenti, Angelo & Dudel, Christian & Hale, Jo Mhairi & Myrskylä, Mikko, 2020. "Working and disability expectancies at older ages: the role of childhood circumstances and education," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106194, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Qiu, Hanyao & Bures, Regina & Shehan, Constance L., 2012. "The inconsistent mediating effects of psychosocial work characteristics on the education–health relationship," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(8), pages 1539-1546.
    12. Solé, Meritxell & Diaz-Serrano, Luis & Rodríguez, Marisol, 2013. "Disparities in work, risk and health between immigrants and native-born Spaniards," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 179-187.
    13. Elaine M. Hernandez & Mike Vuolo & Laura C. Frizzell & Brian C. Kelly, 2019. "Moving Upstream: The Effect of Tobacco Clean Air Restrictions on Educational Inequalities in Smoking Among Young Adults," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(5), pages 1693-1721, October.
    14. Gebreab, Samson Y. & Diez-Roux, Ana V. & Hickson, DeMarc A. & Boykin, Shawn & Sims, Mario & Sarpong, Daniel F. & Taylor, Herman A. & Wyatt, Sharon B., 2012. "The contribution of stress to the social patterning of clinical and subclinical CVD risk factors in African Americans: The Jackson Heart Study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(9), pages 1697-1707.
    15. Clougherty, Jane Ellen & Eisen, Ellen A. & Slade, Martin D. & Kawachi, Ichiro & Cullen, Mark R., 2009. "Workplace status and risk of hypertension among hourly and salaried aluminum manufacturing employees," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 304-313, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:7:p:1367-1378. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.