The persisting effect of unemployment on health and social well-being in men early in working life

Abstract

In our studies of the effects of unemployment in the early working life of men in a British national birth cohort we have shown elsewhere that this experience was part of a longer term accumulation of social and health disadvantage. This present study asks whether men's unemployment also inflicted potential longterm damage to future socio–economic chances and health. We therefore constructed indicators of socio–economic circumstances and health at 33 years from factors already shown to be associated with health in later life. For the socio–economic indicator we used a combination of income, occupational status and home ownership and described this as socio–economic capital. For the health indicator we combined scores of body mass index, leisure time exercise, frequency of eating fresh fruit and of smoking, and described this as health capital. After controlling for pre-labour market socio–economic and health factors, prolonged unemployment is shown here to reduce significantly both socio–economic and health capital by age 33 years. We conclude that the experience of prolonged unemployment early in the working life of this population of young men looks likely to have a persisting effect on their future health and socio–economic circumstances.

Introduction

Much effort has gone into asking how unemployment affects the individual and it is now clear that the economic and health impacts are considerable Westergaard et al., 1989, Martikainen and Valkonen, 1996. The nature of the impact is likely to vary with career stage. For those in mid or late career the economic impact may end working life and diminish pension entitlement. There are also increased mental and physical health problems associated with unemployment at this stage in life (Ferman and Gardner, 1979). On the other hand those early in their working life may be able, in due course, to overcome such economic and health setbacks associated with unemployment. However, we found in a longitudinal study which began at the birth of its subjects, that young men's experience of prolonged unemployment was associated with health outcomes by age 33 years which were likely to have long-term effects. As in other studies we found, and have already reported elsewhere, that prolonged unemployment was associated with a raised risk of smoking, of problem drinking and symptoms of anxiety and depression, even having taken account of the effects of such pre-labour market factors as parental social class, educational attainment, behaviour at school, crowding in the home, region of residence, body mass index at 16 years and height at age 7 years, which were known to increase the risk of these health associated outcomes Montgomery et al., 1996, Montgomery et al., 1998. The association of disadvantage in childhood with unemployment in young adulthood should therefore be regarded as part of an accumulation of disadvantage across the life course. Our earlier work has shown that those who experienced a lot of unemployment did not set off at the beginning of their working lives from a level playing field. The objective of the present analysis is to assess the contribution of unemployment, independently of these other disadvantages, to each individual's socio–economic and health capital at age 33 years.

These findings of different sources of risk associated with unemployment, namely pre-labour market factors as well as the risk associated with unemployment itself, have parallels in other and related topic areas. It has been shown that family and socio–economic circumstances in early life are strongly associated with later life chances, in terms of educational attainment and subsequent occupation, income and quality of life Douglas, 1964, Douglas et al., 1968, Fogelman, 1983, Elder et al., 1984, Ferri, 1993. For example, in a longitudinal study of men's income at age 36 years it was shown that educational qualifications and the quality of the primary school remained significant predictors even after taking account of father's social class and education and current social class (Kuh and Wadsworth, 1991). In a comparable way it has also been shown that early life growth and development, which are strongly associated with parental social class, are significant predictors of health in adult life (Barker, 1996). Educational attainment and adult social class are also significant predictors of such health related behaviour as smoking, nutrition, alcohol consumption and exercise Wadsworth, 1991, Braddon et al., 1988, which in turn are related to later life health. Such associations between early life and adulthood are most likely to be dynamic processes of co-evolution of social attainment and health (Vagero and Illsley, 1995).

These long processes of development of adult socio–economic and health status are sensitive to prevailing circumstances in society. Educational attainment, for example, which is a keystone factor in the processes of the development of adult socio–economic and health chances, has not been a universally available benefit to all in Britain during the last half century, because social circumstances for a considerable time favoured higher education much more for men than for women and more for those originating from non-manual rather than manual class families. Effects of that can be seen in the inequalities in adult socio–economic circumstances and health of those educated during that period (Wadsworth, 1991). Having seen that the effect of poor educational experience was so far reaching, we want now to ask whether the experience of an historically high period of risk of unemployment in early adulthood would in a comparable way leave its mark on those encountering that socially generated risk early in their adult life.

For the work reported here we therefore developed indicators of socio–economic and health capital attained by age 33 years, using factors known to be sensitive to earlier life experience and which were also indicative of future potential in terms of socio–economic attainment and health. We have used these indicators in the work reported here as outcome measures in an analysis which asks whether long periods of unemployment had disrupted the processes of development of such capital, so that those with that experience would have reduced future potential in socio–economic and health terms by age 33 years.

For indicators of socio–economic capital we sought markers of socio–economic achievement known to be associated both with earlier life circumstances and attainment and with later life chances. We used income, current occupation and being a home owner/purchaser. Income and occupation has been shown to be strongly associated with such earlier life factors as parents social class and own educational attainment (Kuh and Wadsworth, 1991) and home ownership is evidently associated with income and occupation. All three affect future life chances. Those with a low income at 33 years have no strong likelihood of moving far up the income curve in subsequent years, nor of changing their socio–economic position and consequently a low chance of purchasing a home if they have not already done so.

Health capital may similarly be seen as associated with factors in earlier life and as indicating future health chances. Health capital indicators are concerned here with physical health and are body mass index, diet, exercise and smoking habits. Each of these indicators is strongly associated with social class of family of origin, educational attainment and earlier and current occupation and each is also later in life part of the basis of a risk or protective factor associated with physical function, morbidity and mortality Wadsworth, 1996, Marmot and Wadsworth, 1997, Kuh and Ben Shlomo, 1997.

This paper reports an analysis which first shows the relationship of unemployment experienced with socio–economic and health capital acquired by age 33 years, then the association of pre-labour market factors with health and socio–economic capital at 33 years and asks finally whether the experience of prolonged unemployment was associated with reduced health and socio–economic capital even having taken account of pre-labour market factors.