Harder, better, faster... yet stronger? Working conditions and self-declaration of chronic diseases

Éric Defebvre (1, 2)

1 TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques
2 ERUDITE - Equipe de Recherche sur l’Utilisation des Données Individuelles en lien avec la Théorie Economique

The role of working conditions on workers’ health status has been widely acknowledged in the literature in general but has received less attention in economics, due to the inherent statistical biases and the lack of data available to determine the role of simultaneous and chronic exposures. This study aims at estimating the causal impact of detrimental working conditions on the self-declaration of chronic diseases in France. Using a rebuilt retrospective lifelong panel and defining indicators for physical and psychosocial strains, we implement a mixed econometric strategy relying on difference-in-differences and matching methods taking into account for selection biases as well as unobserved heterogeneity. For men and women, we find deleterious effects of both types of working conditions on the declaration of chronic diseases after exposure, with varying patterns of impacts according to the strains’ nature and magnitude. These results bring insights on the debate linked to legal age retirement postponement and plead for policies happening early in individuals’ careers in order to prevent subsequent, mid-career health repercussions as well as schemes more focused on psychosocial risk factors.

Mots clés: Working conditions; Chronic diseases; Difference-in-differences; Matching

Domaines: Economies et finances

Éric Defebvre. Harder, better, faster... yet stronger? Working conditions and self-declaration of chronic diseases. 2019. ⟨hal-02070308⟩