Health effects of discontinuities in female employment and marital status

Judith H. Hibbard and Clyde R. Pope

Social Science & Medicine, 1993, vol. 36, issue 8, 1099-1104

Abstract: The discontinuities that characterize women's work histories are also a factor in women's marital histories. Family obligations and childbearing contribute to women's unique employment histories, which include intermittent labor force participation and mobility between employers. While research has increasingly focussed on the effect of labor force participation on women's health, little attention has been given to the effect of the consistency or the stability of labor force participation on health. The purpose of this paper is to examine 15 years of employment histories and marital status changes among a cohort of women and to determine the cumulative effect of these histories on subsequent morbidity and self-reported health. The cohort of 556 women examined in this study were interviewed as part of a household interview survey completed in 1970-1971, and resurveyed via a mail-out questionnaire, in 1985-1986. Medical record data for the full 15 years of the study have been linked with the survey data. The findings suggest that work discontinuities and marital status discontinuities are unrelated to morbidity during the study period. However, two or more changes in marital status are related to poor self-reported health at follow-up.

Keywords: social; roles; employment; characteristics; morbidity; role; changes; women's; health; employment; history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(93)90128-Q
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:8:p:1099-1104

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).