Variations of Stressful Work and Effects on Health after Labour Market Exit. Results from Share and Elsa

Recent research has highlighted the importance of former life stages in explaining social inequalities in health at older age. In this paper, we describe working conditions during adulthood and analyse their influence on health after labour market exit. Analyses are based on two longitudinal studies with comparable information across 14 European countries: the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA), and the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We measure working conditions in terms of psychosocial stress at work (as defined by the demand-control and the effort-reward imbalance models), as well as working careers are regrouped using sequences analyses. Moreover - given cross-national dataset – we explore the relationship between specific indicators of social and labour market policies (e.g. expenditure on active labour market policy) and working conditions. Results show important variations of working conditions according to gender, socioeconomic position and countries. In addition, results illustrate the importance of work and employment for health among older adults, where effects of stressful work and unstable careers on later health were more consistent for men.