Agenda

According to a study conducted on a sample of approximately 65,000 workers aged over 50 from 27 European countries, there is a strong association between exposure to physically demanding jobs and the development of serious health conditions.

The study, conducted by Giacomo Pasini, Director of the Department of Economics, and his former PhD student Petru Crudu, now a lecturer at the University of Innsbruck, also shows that the impact of physically demanding work is greater among women. The research also led to the development of the Job Strain Intensity, an index designed to measure the extent to which different job tasks are associated with poorer health outcomes.

The findings show that, among the different occupational stressors considered, physical job intensity is the factor most strongly associated with poorer health later in life. Individuals who have been more exposed to physically demanding work throughout their careers are more likely to develop health problems and, in particular, tend to experience health deterioration at an earlier age. These associations are particularly evident for cardiovascular, metabolic, and respiratory diseases.

The analysis also shows that it is not sufficient to classify workers based solely on their occupation. It is equally important to consider the specific tasks involved in each job. Tasks most strongly associated with poorer health include, for example, cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, identifying and reporting hazards, operating heavy equipment, agricultural work, and repair and maintenance activities. These findings highlight how the actual content of job tasks can provide more information than occupational categories alone.

These results highlight how inequalities in the labour market can also translate into health inequalities. For this reason, prevention policies, improvements in working conditions, and greater flexibility in retirement rules could be particularly important for workers in the most demanding occupations.

Professor Pasini was interviewed by TGR Veneto.

Full article available here.