Background: This paper reviews and analyses the main publications concerning health and mortality of the unemployed in France, in order to formulate research orientations for future studies or secondary data analysis.
Methods: The conceptual framework was first set up by assembling the different hypotheses concerning the link between health and unemployment (causality versus selection). A review of the different studies was organized by type: health studies based on data from either cross-sectional health surveys at a national or regional scale, or longitudinal surveys, and mortality studies based on data from follow-up of census samples.
Results: Those studies confirm the health disadvantage of the unemployed relative to the employed, in terms of self-perceived health, morbidity, health services utilization and mortality. They provide arguments in favor of both the causality and selection hypotheses.
Conclusion: The exact nature of the health conditions and causes of death associated with unemployment needs further clarification, as well as the causal pathways.