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We study the link between the revelation of a hitherto non-existent occupational risk - mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 - and subsequent worker behaviour. We link occupation-specific data on COVID-19 mortality to individual level data sets. We find that wages did not adjust, but workers started leaving high-risk occupations during 2020. These effects are stronger for workers not affected by lockdowns or working from home orders and for those considered to be clinically vulnerable to COVID-19 and are not driven by negative health shocks or employer-initiated separations. Occupation-level results suggest that employment began to rebound in 2021., (© 2022 The Author(s).)

Background: Disease incidence and premature deaths tend to be influenced by multiple health risky behaviours, including smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and unhealthy diet. Risky behaviours tend not to be independent and may have a multiplicative effect on disease incidence and healthcare cost. Thus, understanding the interrelationship between health behaviours and their effect on health outcomes is crucial in designing behavioural intervention programmes., Objective: To examine the interrelationship between health risky behaviours and associated disease outcomes amongst Scottish adults., Methods: We use hospitalisation episode data from the Scottish Morbidity Records, (SMR), that have been administratively linked to Scottish Health Surveys (SHeS) respondents with target disease defined by relevant ICD9 and 10 codes. We apply a recursive multivariate probit model to jointly estimate the health risky behaviours and disease incidence to adequately control for unobserved heterogeneity. The model is estimated separately by gender., Results: Modelling health risk behaviours and disease incidence equations independently rather than jointly may be misleading. We find a clear socioeconomic gradient predicting health risky behaviours and the results differ by gender. Specifically, smoking appears to be a key driver of other health risky behaviours. Current smokers are more likely to be drinking above the recommended limit, physically inactive, and eating inadequate diet., Conclusions: Interventions targeting current smokers to quit could spillover to other behaviours by reducing excessive drinking, improve physical activity and adequate diet. Thus, improvements in one behaviour may increase the likelihood of adopting other healthier lifestyle behaviours., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Olajide, Eberth and Ludbrook.)

Background: Smokers and ex-smokers are at risk of many chronic diseases. However, never smokers and never smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) are also at risk. Additionally, smoking behaviours and their associated disease risk are socially patterned and positively associated with health inequalities. However, other lifestyle choices also contribute to health inequalities. We aim to assess the contribution of other lifestyle behaviours pertaining to alcohol, physical inactivity and weight to smoking-related disease risk across (i) the socioeconomic spectrum and (ii) smoking status., Methods: Smoking-related disease risk is modelled using probit analysis. The results are used to predict disease risk across the socioeconomic dimension and smoking status for a set of healthy and unhealthy behaviours using the administratively linked Scottish Health Surveys and Scottish Morbidity Records., Results: The results confirm the deprivation gradient in disease risk regardless of smoking status group. Imposition of healthy (unhealthy) lifestyle behaviours decreases (increases) the predicted risk across the deprivation distribution regardless of smoking status providing evidence of the multifaceted health behavioural determinants of disease risk across the deprivation distribution., Conclusion: The results are of policy interest as they suggest that to reduce inequalities in smoking-related diseases, interventions reducing both smoking and other unhealthy behaviours are required.

Motivating individuals to actively engage in physical activity due to its beneficial health effects has been an integral part of Scotland's health policy agenda. The current Scottish guidelines recommend individuals participate in physical activity of moderate vigour for 30 min at least five times per week. For an individual contemplating the recommendation, decisions have to be made in regard of participation, intensity, duration and multiplicity. For the policy maker, understanding the determinants of each decision will assist in designing an intervention to effect the recommended policy. With secondary data sourced from the 2003 Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) we statistically model the combined decisions process, employing a copula approach to model specification. In taking this approach the model flexibly accounts for any statistical associations that may exist between the component decisions. Thus, we model the endogenous relationship between the decision of individuals to participate in sporting activities and, amongst those who participate, the duration of time spent undertaking their chosen activities. The main focus is to establish whether dependence exists between the two random variables assuming the vigour with which sporting activity is performed to be independent of the participation and duration decision. We allow for a variety of controls including demographic factors such as age and gender, economic factors such as income and educational attainment, lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, healthy eating and medical history. We use the model to compare the effect of interventions designed to increase the vigour with which individuals undertake their sport, relating it to obesity as a health outcome.