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Many countries have implemented policies to extend working lives in response to population ageing, yet there remains little understanding of what drives paid work in later life, nor how this is changing over time. This paper utilises the 1988/89 Survey of Retirement and Retirement Plans, the 1999 British Household Panel Survey and the 2008 English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, to investigate drivers of paid work in the ten years surrounding state pension age (SPA) for women and men in, comparing cohorts born in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Using optimal matching analysis with logistic and multinomial regression models, the study assesses the relative importance of lifecourse histories, socio-economic circumstances and contemporaneous factors, in determining paid work in mid- and later life. Participation in paid work in the five years preceding and beyond SPA increased markedly for men and women across cohorts, with women's lifecourses and engagement with paid work changing considerably in these periods. However, for women, a lifetime history of paid work remained a crucially important predictor of paid work in later life, and this relationship has strengthened over time. Experiencing divorce has also become an important driver of paid work around SPA for the youngest cohort. Having children later, and still having a mortgage, also independently predict labour force participation for women and men. Across all cohorts and for women and men, working at these older ages was a function of higher income and better health. These findings suggest that policies which enable people to maintain ties to paid work across the lifecourse may be more effective at encouraging later-life employment than those concerned only with postponing the retirement transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a key methodological challenge in the modeling of individual poverty dynamics--the influence of measurement error. Taking the US and Britain as case studies and building on recent research that uses latent Markov models to reduce bias, we examine how measurement error can affect a range of important poverty estimates. Our data are taken from the British Household Panel Survey and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics, for working-aged adults over the period 1993-2003. For both national samples we ask how common vulnerability to poverty was over the period in question, what the entry and exit probabilities were for the group likely to transition into or out of poverty, and how effective redistributive programs were at protecting those most at risk. Crucially, in answering these questions we estimate and remove the effects of error in the measurement of poverty status. Throughout, we compare our results with estimates that do not take this error into account, and assess the implications for understanding poverty dynamics both within and between the two countries. Our modeling strategy extends previous research in several respects, enabling us to make stronger statements about measurement error and individual poverty dynamics. We find that correcting for error affects conclusions in important ways: Poverty is less temporary and risks are less widely dispersed than otherwise assumed, while cross-national differences are more pronounced.

This study is a mixed-method investigation of the association between labor-management relations and employees' mental health in a municipal sector undergoing New Public Management-style restructuring. Analysis of the survey data (N = 902) demonstrates a relatively strong and persistent relationship between management practices and employee psychological health. Interviews with a subsample of 54 workers reveal that management's excessive control, incompetence, and unresponsiveness, combined with minimal rewards for workers' efforts, left staff feeling devalued. Our findings suggest that workers' mental health was harmed by the undermining of their sense of self-worth and the loss of avenues to improve their working conditions. Cette etude presente une enquire selon la methode mixte sur l'association qui existe entre les relations travail-gestion et la sante mentale d'employes d'un secteur municipal subissant une restructuration de style nouvelle gestion publique. L'analyse des donnees du sondage (N = 902) demontre qu'il existe une relation relativement forte et constante entre les pratiques de gestion et la sante psychologique des employes. Des interviews realisees aupres d'un sous-echantillon de 54 travallleurs revelent que le controle excessif, l'incompetence et l'indifference des gestionnaires combines avec un minimum de recompenses soulignant les efforts consentis par les travailleurs ont pour consequence que le personnel se sent devalorise. Nos resultats demontrent que la sante mentale des travailleurs a ete ebranlee, en sapant leur estime de soi et en leur faisant perdre des possibilites d'ameliorer leurs conditions de travail., MAJOR STRUCTURAL SHIFTS IN THE GLOBAL economy have led to dramatic restructuring of paid workplaces and, as might be expected, researchers are finding that this is harming employee health and [...]

Objectives. We reviewed literature on comparative social policy and life course research and compared associations between health and socioeconomic circumstances during an 11-year period in the United States and the United Kingdom. Methods. We obtained data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the British Household Panel Survey (1990-2002). We used latent transition analysis to examine change in self-rated health from one discrete state to another; these health trajectories were then associated with socioeconomic measures at the beginning and at the end of the study period. Results. We identified good and poor latent health states, which remained relatively stable over time. When change occurred, decline rather than improvement was more likely. UK populations were in better health compared with US populations and were more likely to improve over time. Labor market participation was more strongly associated with good health in the United Kingdom than in the United States. Conclusions. National policies and practices may be keeping more US workers than UK workers who are in poor health employed, but British policies may give UK workers the chance to return to better health and to the labor force.

Although there has been evidence to suggest that women exhibit more vulnerability to psychological distress than men when they lose a spouse or remarry, knowledge about the process by which men and women adjust to marital change remains fragmentary. This is due in part to the length of time between observations in longitudinal studies on marital change, with the result that mental health status is typically assessed long after a marital status transition has occurred. The purpose of the current study is to test for gender differences in the short-term mental health effects of a marital status transition using three waves of data collected at two year intervals in a Canadian population health survey (N = 11,155). Growth curve analyses confirm the mental health advantage of marriage and reveal that the short-term effects of moving into and out of marriage on psychological distress are similar for men and women. We discuss the implications of these findings for resolving competing explanations regarding psychological adjustment to marital change. Keywords: Marital status transitions; Psychological distress; Gender; Canada

This study examines the relationship between poverty and health in time. Following the argument that time is significant for shaping the experience of being poor or not poor and growing evidence of heterogeneity in long-term patterns of poverty, we investigate whether different kinds of poverty have distinct consequences for long-term health. Using data from the 1968-1996 annual waves of the United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics Data, we estimate a general growth mixture model to assess the relationship between the longitudinal courses of poverty and health. The model allows us to first estimate latent poverty classes in the data and then determine their effects on latent self-rated health. Four types of long-term poverty patterns characterized as stable nonpoor, exiting poverty, entering poverty and stable poor were evident in the data. These different kinds of poverty affected self-rated health trajectories in distinct ways, but worked in concert with age, education and race to create gaps in initial health status that were constant over time. Keywords: Poverty; Self-rated health; Trajectories; Inequalities; USA

Women report more psychological distress than men and recent evidence suggests that this gap increases with age. It has been argued that the widening differential in distress reflects the progressive and cumulative nature of women's disadvantaged work and family roles. Drawing on the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis and social stress theory, we test: (1) whether exposure to chronic stress accounts for an increasingly larger proportion of the gender effect on distress with age; and (2) whether women are increasingly more vulnerable to the effects of chronic stress on distress with age. Data are from the 1994 wave of the Canadian National Population Health Survey, a national probability sample of women and men aged 20 and older (N = 13,798). Exposure to long-term stress helps us understand gender differences in distress for those in their pre-retirement years. However, contrary to the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis, the model became increasingly less likely to explain such differences with age. Gendered vulnerability to long-term stress was not evident in the sample. The implications of these findings are discussed with particular reference to our ongoing efforts to understand health in the context of social structure and subjectivity. KEYWORDS. Gender, age, distress, mental health, social stress

An internationally influential model of population health was developed in Canada in the 1990s, shifting the research agenda beyond health care to the social and economic determinants of health. While agreeing that health has important social determinants, the authors believe that this model has serious shortcomings; they critique the model by focusing on its hidden assumptions. Assumptions about how knowledge is produced and an implicit interest group perspective exclude the sociopolitical and class contexts that shape interest group power and citizen health. Overly rationalist assumptions about change understate the role of agency. The authors review the policy and practice implications of the Canadian population health model and point to alternative ways of viewing the determinants of health. (Am J Public Health. 2003;93:392-396)

Objectives. In this study we examined the relationship between indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) and mortality for a representative sample of individuals. Methods. The sample included 3734 individuals aged 45 and older interviewed in 1984 in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In the current study, mortality was tracked between 1984 and 1994 and is related to SES indicators of education, occupation, income, and wealth. Results. Wealth and recent family income were the indicators that were most strongly associated with subsequent mortality. These associations persisted after we controlled for the other SES indicators and were stronger for women than for men and for nonelderly than for elderly individuals. Conclusions. We found that the economic indicators of SES were usually as strongly associated with mortality as, if not more strongly associated with mortality than, the more conventional indicators of completed schooling and occupation.

Existing research on the social patterning of women's health draws attention to the significance of social roles and socioeconomic position. Although we know a great deal about health differences according to the occupancy of these positions, we know a lot less about why such patterns exist. This paper addresses this gap by examining the pathways through which social structure is linked to health using data from a 1994 Canadian national probability sample of women, aged 25--64 years. We begin by charting differences in women's self-rated ill-health, distress, and reports of long-standing health conditions by socioeconomic position and social role occupation. We then assess the extent to which these patterns can be understood in relation to the chronic stress arising from these social locations. Socioeconomic position, assessed by housing tenure, education, and household income, was positively related to health. Employment enhanced women's health, as did being currently married and a mother living with children. The ongoing stressors that distinguish the experiences of various structural locations accounted for some of the health effects of social structure, particularly for socioeconomic position. However, chronic stress was largely irrelevant to the pathways linking social roles to health. In fact, employed women and parents living with children enjoyed better health despite their greater stress. Keywords: Women's health; Roles; Chronic stress; Canada

Data from the 1994 Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS) do not confirm the widespread assumption that women experience considerably more ill health than men. The patterns vary by condition and age and at many ages, the health of women and men is more similar than is often assumed. However, we should not minimize the gender differences that do exist and in this paper we focus on three health problems which are more common among women: distress, migraine and arthritis/rheumatism. We consider to what extent work, household structure and social, personal and material resources explain these gender differences in health. Analysis of the distributions of paid work conditions, household circumstances and resources reveal mostly minor differences by gender and differences in exposure to these circumstances contribute little to understanding gender differences in health. There is also little evidence that greater vulnerability is a generalized health response of women to paid and household circumstances. We find limited evidence that social, personal and material resources are involved in pathways linking work and home circumstances to health in ways that differ between the sexes. In conclusion, we consider some reasons for the lack of support for our explanatory model: the measures available in the NPHS data set which contains little information on the household itself; the difficulty of separating `gender' from the social and material conditions of men's and women's lives; and changes in women's and men's roles which may have led to a narrowing of differences in health. Keywords: Gender; Social determinants of health; Women; Work; Canada

Objectives. The aim of this study was to examine relationships between income and mortality, focusing on the predictive utility of single-year and multiyear measures of income, the shape of the income gradient in mortality, trends in this gradient over time, the impact of income change on mortality, and the joint effects of income and age, race, and sex on mortality risk. Methods. Data were taken from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the years 1968 through 1989. Fourteen 10-year panels were constructed in which predictors were measured over the first 5 years and vital status over the subsequent 5 years. The panels were pooled and logistic regression was used in the analysis. Results. Income level was a strong predictor of mortality, especially for persons under the age of 65 years. Persistent low income was particularly consequential for mortality. Income instability was also important among middle-income individuals. Single-year and multiyear income measures had comparable predictive power All effects persisted after adjustment for education and initial health status. Conclusions. The issues of low income and income instability should be addressed in population health policy. (Am J Public Health. 1997;87: 1476-1483)

Housework disability, or difficulty carrying out household tasks, is an important consequence of long-term health conditions. Despite its particular salience to women because of the ongoing gendered division of labor in the household, very little is known about the social correlates of housework disability. Drawing from research on social models of disability and social roles and health, this paper examines the effects of roles on women's difficulties with housework. Data are from the 1986 Statistics Canada Health and Activity Limitation Survey, a cross-sectional, national probability sample of community dwellers with disabling conditions. An unweighted subsample of 15,661 women between 20 and 64 years of age was selected for analysis. The occupation of social roles, including those of mother, worker and marital partner, reduced the likelihood that women would report housework disability. In addition, children's ages were inversely related to housework disability among those living with children. These findings extend the growing literature on social roles and health by suggesting that the role enhancement hypothesis may help us to understand experiences of disability.