As populations across the developed world grow older, Governments are keen to find ways to enable workers to stay active and fit for longer. We know work-related stress can lead to long-term health problems: but which types of employment histories are particularly harmful, and how do the effects play out over time? A new study…
Tag: Heart Disease
Retirement: good or bad for your heart?
Across the globe, more people are spending more time in retirement than ever before. So staying healthy in later life is critical. Yet political debates on ageing tend to ignore a growing body of research on how retirement can affect our health. Baowen Xue and colleagues from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at…
Would reducing social inequality lead to more years of healthy life?
Across Europe, there’s good news for older people – life expectancy is on the rise and levels of disability among older people are falling. But there are concerns that a longer life may not be a better life for all. So who benefits from increased life expectancy? Jenny Head and colleagues from the IDEAR network…
Working with a long-term illness – does employment status make a difference?
Across the developed world, a growing share of the population suffers from chronic disease such as diabetes, arthritis or heart problems – in the EU, around 45 per cent of those aged 55-64 had such a disease in 2015. And that affects their ability to work: just half of those with chronic illnesses are employed,…
Work stress and ill health – what’s the link?
Lots of studies have suggested stress can be a cause of ill health – and that leads to people ceasing to work before they reach retirement age. But most have offered only a snapshot on the issue. Now a new analysis of data from a major panel study by José Ignacio CuitúnCoronado and Tarani Chandola…
A question of support: working longer and what works
As more of us work for longer, it’s important to recognise the needs of older workers: and that includes the fact that as we age we are more likely to suffer from long-term illnesses. To what extent do our working conditions affect our decisions about whether or not to continue in a job despite having…
Out of work and overweight: Think again.
There’s a widely held preconception that people who are out of work are overweight, perpetuated by the media and, indeed, reinforced by some academic studies. But recent robust evidence throws a whole new light on things and indicates that unemployed people are in fact much more likely to be underweight, and less likely to be…
Frailty: what is the connection with our working lives?
People are living longer, and the number of over-65s is expected to reach around one in four of the UK population by 2050. But is retirement a golden age, or will we be dogged by poor health? Wentian Lu from University College London and colleagues investigated how our working pattern throughout our lives affects our…
Want to be fit at forty? Don’t have a baby early!
Having a family early may not be good for your health later on. That was the conclusion of a team of researchers at the ESRC International centre for Lifecourse Studies when they looked at the interplay between the work and family lives of men and women, whose lives have been tracked over time in the…
Having a baby early? It might not be good for you later
Being employed is generally good for your health. That’s what a large body of research has shown over the years. But what about when you put having a family into the mix? That’s a question that Dr Anne McMunn at the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL has been asking in a series…