Pink slips aren’t rosy

OPINION:

Studies show that unemployment and the fear of unemployment are bad for workers’ health.

Professor Kate Strully at Harvard’s School of Public Health found in a recently published study that job loss can lead to heart disease, hypertension, stroke and diabetes. Frequent involuntary job changes also were found to be detrimental to the health of workers who were not already sick. For employees who were fired or laid off through no fault of their own, the increased risk of poorer health occurred mainly among blue-collar workers. The analysis was based on data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationwide representative survey.

Harvey Brenner, professor of public health and behavioral sciences at the University of North Texas, reported earlier this year on research in which he found that the stress of unemployment reduced life expectancy and increased mortality rates. Job loss often meant the loss of health benefits and the postponement of needed health care. Mr. Brenner noted that in the current economic recession, people seem to be dying sooner after their job loss than they did in earlier years.

A 2007 study by Daniel G. Sullivan at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Till von Wachter of Columbia University, published by the Chicago Fed, analyzed administrative data on employment and earnings that were matched to death records. They found that job displacement led to a 15 percent to 20 percent increase in death rates for up to 20 years. “A worker displaced in midcareer can expect to live about two years less than a luckier counterpart.”

Analyses of the impact of job insecurity on the health of the employed are even more disconcerting, if only because there are many more millions of people with jobs than are unemployed. Working Americans currently outnumber the unemployed by 9 to 1.

According to Dr. Stuart Whitaker, senior lecturer in occupational health at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom, recession-related job insecurity affects the employed in two stages. Initially, workers who fear job loss have incomplete knowledge about their situation. Because of the uncertainty, they suffer anxiety, lose sleep, drink and smoke more and are likely to feel ill and seek medical attention more often.

Elevated blood pressure can occur as well as mental health and family-related problems. While on the job, workers can become more disengaged, less motivated and more prone to absenteeism.

However, in the second stage, when actual job losses occur, the newly unemployed now know where they stand and can begin to deal with their problem. According to Dr. Whitaker, this phase “seems to be less damaging on the health of workers than the uncertainly of anticipating major change.”

Last month, the University of Michigan reported the results of a recently published study on job security by Sarah Burgard and James House at UM and Jennie Brand of the University of California at Los Angeles. The study drew upon long-term data from two nationally representative samples of the population to analyze the effect of job insecurity on the health of employed workers.

According to Ms. Burgard, “This study provides the strongest evidence to date that persistent job insecurity has a negative impact on worker health. In fact, chronic job insecurity was a stronger predictor of poor health than either smoking or hypertension in one of the groups we studied. … It may seem surprising that chronically high job insecurity is more strongly linked with health declines than actual job loss or unemployment.”

A Gallup poll last month showed that 1 in 3 workers was worried about losing his or her job, twice the rate of a year earlier.

Clearly, there’s evidence that economic growth and job creation are essential to Americans’ physical and mental health as well as our material well-being. Do we then need a trillion dollars added to our national debt for an unpopular government-run health care program? Or might we be more prosperous and healthier if the administration and Congress reined in overspending and relaxed their efforts to re-engineer the economy, allowing it to heal itself as quickly as possible? As for the talked-about tax increase to help finance health reform, it will only cost more jobs and exacerbate health problems.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, got it right when he said, “I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy’s out of recession.” Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, also got it right when he said, “Bringing up the health care situation in the midst of recession … was a mistake. For the moment, let’s clear the deck.”

Alfred Tella is former Georgetown University research professor of economics.