Occupational Career and Mortality of Elderly Men

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Citation: Moore, Haywardq (1990) Occupational Career and Mortality of Elderly Men. Demography (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Occupational Career and Mortality of Elderly Men
Tagged: uw-madison (RSS), wisconsin (RSS), sociology (RSS), demography (RSS), prelim (RSS), qual (RSS), WisconsinDemographyPrelimAugust2009 (RSS)

Summary

This article presents findings from an analysis of occupational differentials in mortality among a cohort of males aged 55 and up in the United States for the period 1966-1983. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Men, the authors construct event histories for the 3000+ respondents who reach the exact age of 55. The social and technical divisions of labor that define the occupational structure give rise not only to differences in socioeconomic achievement and status but also to differences in health benefits and exposure to physically demanding or stressful working conditions factors that operate as proximate determinants of mortality. Two quire proximate socially structured causes of mortality associated with occupation are life-style (including health behaviors, access to the health care system, and attitudes toward health care/providers) and exposure (working environment both physical and mental/emotional). The high volume of movement between jobs, however, makes such analyses difficult. The authors choose to focus on the effects over the occupational career (longest job and most recent job) to assess the effects of occupation on mortality. The dynamics that characterize socioeconomic differentials in mortality are analyzed by evaluating the differential effects of occupation over the career cycle. Maximum likelihood estimates of hazard-model parameters show that the mortality of current or last occupation differs substantially from that of longest occupation, controlling for education, income, health status, and other sociodemographic factors. For example, in terms of longest occupation, professionals decidedly have the lowest risk of death but only an average rate in terms of latest occupation. There are more dramatic effects for rates of farmers, farm laborers, and clerical workers. In terms of longest occupation, clericals have the 2nd lowest mortality rate but suffer the highest rate with regard to latest occupations. Similarly, farmers and farm laborers have high rates of death for longest occupation but the lowest rates for latest occupation. More generally, the rate of mortality is reduced by the substantive complexity (a scale of routinization and autonomy) of the longest occupation while social skills and physical and environmental demands of the latest occupation lower mortality. The authors argue that individuals in the most dangerous occupations (or more frail individuals) are likely to change to a less dangerous/physically demanding job, explaining the strange relationships between latest occupation and mortality rates. The authors argue that we can no longer dismiss broad occupational differences in mortality as artifacts of social status. Education and income do account for a portion of these differences; however, sizable mortality differences between occupations emerge that cannot be reduced to education, income, or health effects once prior experiences are separated from current experiences. It seems certain that workers do not fully escape the consequences of part occupational exposure.