For precarious people, obtaining stable and secure employment reduces the risk of premature death by 20%.
- Precarious jobs are those that are low paid, with short contracts and few rights.
- According to a study, people in precarious employment have a greater risk of premature death.
- Moving to stable, secure employment reduces their risk of premature death by 20%.
Health and work are linked. Certain tasks increase the risk of suffering from illnesses, complex work situations can harm mental health and, according to a recent study, having a precarious job can reduce life expectancy. The authors, researchers from the Karolinska Institute, located in Stockholm, demonstrate that people with this type of contract are more likely to die prematurely. Their results appeared in the scientific journal Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Work: how does precariousness affect life expectancy?
In their work, Swedish scientists use the term precarious employment to describe positions relying on short contracts such as temp work, those with low wages, a lack of responsibility and rights, “all of which lead to a professional life without predictability or security”. They sought to understand how these could impact the risk of death. The researchers used data from a registry including more than 250,000 Swedish workers aged 20 to 55, collected over a period from 2005 to 2017. Among them, they were particularly interested in those who moved from a job with precarious working conditions to more secure employment, then they compared their information with that of people who remained in precarious conditions.
“Those who moved from precarious to secure employment had a 20% lower risk of death, regardless of what happened afterwards, compared to those who remained in precarious employment., conclude the authors. If they kept this type of job for 12 years, their risk of death decreased by 30%. To achieve this result, the authors eliminated all other factors that could have an impact such as age, illness or life changes, such as divorce.
Precariousness and work: the mortality rate can be reduced
“This is the first study to show that moving from precarious to secure employment can reduce the risk of death, says Theo Bodin, assistant professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet, and lead author of the study. This means that the risk of premature death is higher if you continue to work without a secure employment contract..” For its co-author, Nuria Matilla-Santander, there is an important lesson to be learned from this study: the high mortality rate observed among precarious workers can be reduced. “If we reduce job insecurity, we can prevent premature deaths in Sweden.”, she concludes. Before that, further research will be needed to understand the specific causes of this higher mortality among precarious people.
