Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Would An Unemployed Person Face Higher Health Hazard?

The current financial crisis has caused many people losing their jobs and the unemployment rate globally has reached historic high level. A person, who is jobless, surely feels very depressed because his or her family would greatly be affected, especially when he or she is the sole income provider. Besides, losing the job might just make this person sick.

The unemployed workers who lost a job through no fault of their own were twice as likely to report developing new medical disorders like diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) or heart disease over the next year and a half, compared to people who were continuously employed. Interestingly, the risk was just as high for those who found new jobs quickly as those who remained unemployed.

This was the finding reported in the early May 2009 by a researcher from Harvard School of Public in a study that analyzed detailed employment and health data from 8,125 individuals surveyed in 1999, 2001 and 2003 by the United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

The fact that poor health and unemployment are often closely related has long been known. Nevertheless, health experts have still not figured out whether unemployment triggers illness, or whether unhealthy people are more likely to leave a job, fired or being laid off.

In order to find out the answer, the new study looked specifically at people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own, for instance, because of a business failure or closure, and there is nothing related to their health conditions.

In the study, only 6 percent of people with steady jobs developed a new health condition during each survey period of about a year and a half, comparing to 10 percent of those who had lost a job during the same period. Whether the laid off workers had found new employment did not change the figure of a one in 10 chance of developing a new health condition.

No comments:

Post a Comment