The ‘Healthy Worker Effect’: Do Healthy People Climb the Occupational Ladder?

Joan Costa Font () and Martin Ljunge
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Joan Costa Font: London School of Economics
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Joan Costa-i-Font

No 1183, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: The association between occupational status and health has been taken to reveal the presence of health inequalities shaped by occupational status. However, that interpretation assumes no influence of health status in explaining occupational standing. This paper documents evidence of non-negligible returns to occupation status on health (which we refer to as the ‘healthy worker effect’). We use a unique empirical strategy that addressed reverse causality, namely an instrumental variable strategy using the variation in average health in the migrant’s country of origin, a health measure plausibly not determined by the migrant’s occupational status. Our findings suggest that health status exerts significant effects on occupational status in several dimensions; having a supervising role, worker autonomy, and worker influence. The effect size of health is larger than that of an upper secondary education.

Keywords: Occupational status; Self-reported health; Immigrants; Work autonomy; Supervising role (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2017-10-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-ltv
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Related works:
Journal Article: The ‘healthy worker effect’: Do healthy people climb the occupational ladder? (2018)
Working Paper: The ‘healthy worker effect’: do healthy people climb the occupational ladder? (2018)
Working Paper: The 'Healthy Worker Effect': Do Healthy People Climb the Occupational Ladder? (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1183

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