Quality of work and health status: a multidimensional analysis

Quality of work has been found to significantly affect health outcomes. In this paper we analyse the extent to which the quality of the work done in the past affects the health of the elderly in Italy. For this purpose, we use data drawn from the Italian sample of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and focus on individuals aged over 60. Using different types of factor analysis, we identify three dimensions of quality of work and five factors of health status. In particular, as regards the former, we distinguish among the physical dimension, the control dimension and the socioeconomic dimension of work quality. As regards health, using a nested factor model we obtain a factor of global health problems and four residual factors of cognitive problems, mobility problems, affective problems and motivational problems. These factors are then analysed by gender using a multivariate analysis. Our findings suggest that good quality of work in terms of the socioeconomic and control dimensions significantly decreases the probability of being globally unhealthy during the elder phase of one’s life cycle as well as of displaying motivational problems, the effect being similar in both genders. We also find that a higher level of control in men’s work increases their affective problems when they are older and have left the labour force, suggesting a loss in men’s social sphere after retirement from a rewarding job and a likely underdevelopment of their relational dimension outside their work activity.