How to Measure “What People do for a Living” in Research on the Socioeconomic Correlates of Health

PURPOSE: Recent evidence suggests that occupational standing is not independently associated with health outcomes when occupations are ranked using socioeconomic criteria. In this study we ask two questions. First, is occupational standing associated with health outcomes when health-related criteria are used to establish the relative standing of occupations? Second, are job characteristics more closely related to health outcomes than occupational characteristics? METHODS: We use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study—that includes a unique combination of occupational, job, and health measures—and estimate a series of logistic regression models of the effects of education and job/occupational characteristics on several health outcomes. RESULTS: We find few independent relationships between occupational standing and health, using socioeconomic or health-related criteria. However, we do find some significant relationships between job characteristics and health outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that what people do for a living does matter for their health, even beyond the effects of educational attainment, but that to assess the relationships between what people do for a living and their health outcomes we should measure the characteristics of their jobs, not of their occupations.