Class notes
College aantekeningen Challenges in work, health and well-being ()
- Course
- Institution
Colleges challenges in work, health and well-being
[Show more]
1 review
By: kikihoogers2001 • 10 months ago
Seller
Follow
AnnaDekker4
Reviews received
Content preview
Lecture 1: Introduction to the course- Work is an important part of people’s wellbeing including socio-economic position, prestige
and identity
- Work is a major cause of illness and injury, weighing heavily on the health care budgets of
welfare states
- Health effect of work are an area of growing policy attention in an ageing society
What is work?
- Paid and unpaid work/labour (productive versus reproductive/subsistence labour)
- In this course we mainly focus on paid work
- Whether work is paid or unpaid may differ across time and place (e.g. childcare, elderly care)
Jobs
- When we talk about people’s work, we tend to talk about their jobs
- Ahonen et al. (2018) consider jobs to be situated descriptions of employment, that take into
account where and how work is actually performed.
- This is dependent on, for example:
o Employment relationship (self-employment, contract)
o Occupation (teachers, welders, nurses)
o Working conditions (location and hours worked, wages)
o Job characteristics (ergonomic demands)
Health and well-being
- Health and well-being are adjacent concepts
- Well-being is the combination of feeling good and functioning well; the experience of
positive emotions such as happiness and contentment as well as the development of one’s
potential, having some control over one’s life, having a sense of purpose, and experiencing
positive relationships (Huppert, 2009)
- Health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity but a state of complete physical,
mental and social well-being (World Health Organization)
How does work affect health and wellbeing
Work affects health and wellbeing in complex, reciprocal, heterogeneous ways (Landsbergis et al.,
2018; Ahonen et al., 2018)
- Complex: work affects health/wellbeing differently in different circumstances (and vice versa)
– and work can even be both health-enhancing and health-damaging at the same time
(mineworkers)
- Reciprocal: causal relations run in both directions
- Heterogeneous: work affects the health/wellbeing of different groups of workers differently
(lecture part 3)
What are job rewards / resources
- Work can have a positive impact on wellbeing and health
- We refer to these positive impacts as job rewards, or job resources
- Wellbeing rewards of employment include
o Income, social status
o Identity
o Social networks
- Health rewards of employment include
o Better self-reported physical and mental health
o Psycho-social resources
o Health insurances & benefits
,Job demands or risks
- Work can have a negative impact on wellbeing
and health
- We refer to these negative impacts as job
demands, stressors or risks
- Work related health problems are common
How does work cause physical health risks
- Employment exposes workers to physical and
mental health demands or risks in
heterogeneous or unequal ways
- Different jobs poses different physical demands/risks
o Exposure to hazards (toxic substances, heavy machinery and sharp objects)
o Repetitive overuse ‘wears out’ body (lifting heavy objects)
o Working conditions (long hours, night work)
How does work cause mental health risks
- Some work poses psycho-social demands (stressors), e.g.:
o Stress enhancing forms of work organization (insecurity, scheduling, =>psychosocial
stressors
o Stressful/traumatic interpersonal encounters (e.g toxic work cultures, client/patient
aggression)
o Work pressure
Most common mental health risk factors
Health inequality at work
- Employment is associated with physical and psycho-social resources as well as demands
- These demands and resources are not distributed equally or randomly across the population
- There is a broad consensus on the existence of a ‘social gradient’ in health
- The social gradient implies that ‘health inequalities mirror wider social inequalities’
(Vickerstaff et al., 2008; Ahonen et al, 2018)
Distribution of job risks and rewards
- In this case, health inequalities mirror labour market inequalities
- Labour markets are unequal institutions
, o Social/occupational class theory
o Labour market segmentation; insider/outsider theories (c.f. Kalleberg’s good jobs
bad jobs)
- Paid work or workers is often subdivided into segments:
o Blue vs white collar; manual vs non-manual
o Self-employment vs dependent employment (employee)
o Occupation / occupational class
Occupational health disparities
- Unequal exposure to health risks across jobs
- Occupational health disparities (OHD) framework (Ahonen et al., 2018; Landsbergis et al.,
2018)
o Health disparities related to work result from the exposure to health demands and
resources associated with different jobs (i.e. the package of occupations, working
conditions and job characteristics)
- Jobs expose workers to different risks
- Some jobs expose workers to more risks than others
Unequal selection into ‘good jobs’
- So exposure to health risks differs by type of job
- Access to jobs with greater physical and psycho-social health resources is unequal too
- Therefore, labour market inequalities might be mirrored in health
- People from lower socio-economic backgrounds, lower educated, ethnic minority groups,
migrants and women are less likely to acquire and hold on to ‘good jobs’ in most countries
Labour market vulnerability
- In labour market research, we use the term ‘vulnerable groups’
- There is not one common definition, but the term generally refer to societal groups that
o spend extended periods of time in precarious employment
o are at risk of exclusion from the labour market, at risk of poverty
o that lack the resources to address negative life events or manage risks
- Groups often considered vulnerable in the labour market include: workers with a disability,
NEETs, low educated, migrants, ethnic minorities, single parents, LGBTQIA+
- Intersecting with age and gender
Social selection and social causation
- Factors like educational achievement, ethnicity, migration status, disabilities, and gender are
intertwined with both work and health.
- Theories differ with regard to the direction of causality
- Social selection hypothesis (Mudd et al.,forthcoming):
o People in poor health will be at a disadvantage in the labour market
- Social causation hypothesis (Mudd et al.,forthcoming):
o People in ‘bad’ jobs are exposed to more physical and mental health hazards and
equipped with fewer resources to address sickness and to live healthy lifestyles.’
Take away messages
- The physical and psycho-social demands and resources of jobs are unequally distributed
- Different jobs are associated with different exposure to physical and psycho-social risks,
demands and resources
- A range of factors like gender, age, education, disability, ethnicity and socio-economic
background affect the types of jobs people have access to as well as their health status
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller AnnaDekker4. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $7.61. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
75759 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now