Typical antidotes for overwork include taking a break, exercising or going on vacation. But what if overwork is unavoidable, as is the case for many low-paid employees who must work two or more jobs just to get by? What if work-related stress is chronic, as is the case for working parents whose employers do not offer regular schedules, sick days or other company benefits? What if the amount or quality of one’s work is no protection against layoffs or abusive bosses?  The answer, detailed in a new study by researchers at Stanford and Harvard, is that work stress can and does shorten lives. The risk goes up as education level goes down, because the lower someone’s level of education, the greater the exposure to work-related stress from unemployment, layoffs, job insecurity, shift work, lack of health insurance, work-family conflict, arbitrary management and low control over scheduling and work duties.  Building on previous research on workplace stressors, the researchers measured the extent to which workplace stress cuts life short. Some findings:  • Among men with 12 or fewer years of education, non-Hispanic blacks lost nearly 2.8 years of life to work-related stress, followed by Hispanic men at 2.3 years and non-Hispanic whites at 1.72 years.  • For men with 17 or more years of education, black men lost about one year, followed by Hispanic men at 0.55 years and white men at 0.42 years.  • Among women with 12 or fewer years of education, Hispanics lost 2.06 years to work-related stress, followed by non-Hispanic blacks at 1.92 years and non-Hispanic whites at 1.4 years.  • For women with 17 or more years of education, loss of life to workplace stress was less than a year for all of three of the racial/ethnic groups in the study.  Demographers have long noted that longevity varies by gender, race, income and education. The new study found that 10 percent to 38 percent of the difference in life expectancy across demographic groups can be explained by differing levels of stress on the job.  Across all groups, the combination of layoffs, unemployment and lack of health insurance was the biggest contributor toward inequality in life spans. The next biggest was low job control, defined as the level of discretion one has over one’s work. This was followed by job insecurity in men and shift work in women.  The unavoidable conclusion is that a healthier population requires healthier workplaces. Job security would be enhanced if government officials focused on full employment in fiscal and monetary policy. Other helpful policies would include a higher minimum wage, fair-scheduling laws, paid time off and job sharing to reduce layoffs in bad economic times. Obamacare is a step in the right direction of insuring more Americans, though it appears that the only way to cover everyone is to sever the link between insurance and work.  It is customary to debate those and other issues in terms of cost versus benefits, individual responsibility versus social obligation. A more important question is how many people will die too soon before policymakers take corrective action.
Stress caused by such factors as job insecurity and lack of health insurance can cut workers’ life expectancy by years.