title: Exposure To Harmful Workplace Practices Could Account For Inequality In Life Spans Across Different Demographic Groups.
abstract: The existence of important socioeconomic disparities in health and mortality is a well-established fact. Many pathways have been adduced to explain inequality in life spans. In this article we examine one factor that has been somewhat neglected: People with different levels of education get sorted into jobs with different degrees of exposure to workplace attributes that contribute to poor health. We used General Social Survey data to estimate differential exposures to workplace conditions, results from a meta-analysis that estimated the effect of workplace conditions on mortality, and a model that permitted us to estimate the overall effects of workplace practices on health. We conclude that 10-38 percent of the difference in life expectancy across demographic groups can be explained by the different job conditions their members experience.
authors.affiliation: Joel Goh (jgoh@hbs.edu) is an assistant professor of business administration in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at the Harvard Business School, in Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Joel
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.affiliation: Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, in California.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pfeffer
authors.affiliation: Stefanos Zenios is the Investment Group of Santa Barbara Professor of Entrepreneurship and a professor of operations, information, and technology at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, in California. He is also the faculty director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford.
authors.forename: Stefanos
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zenios
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008297:Male; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D017132:Workplace / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: Demography; Disparities; Workforce Issues