We've known for a while that smoking kills, and now we know that joblessness does, too. It's sad news for America's unemployed.
Since the 1980s, less educated women have had higher mortality rates, but researchers couldn't pinpoint exactly why.
In fact, "the odds of dying for the least educated women were 37 percent greater than for their more educated peers in any given year in the period of 1997 to 2001. The odds had risen to 66 percent by the period of 2002 to 2006," reports Sabrina Tavernise for The New York Times.
This is according to a paper led by Jennifer Karas Montez of Harvard University's Center for Population and Development Studies, "Explaining The Widening Education Gap In Mortality Among U.S. White Women."
Montex looked at data from the National Center for Health Statistics on 47,000 women ages 45-84, and found that while smoking has a large effect on the disparity in death rates of women with different education levels, employment had one that was that was very nearly as large. Poorly educated women that were unemployed were also more likely to die earlier.
There are a host of economic, social-psychological and health factors that come into play; but Montez drew a strong connection between education, unemployment, and mortality rates, particularly for women. She writes that:
"Better educated individuals are less likely to experience marital, parental, and financial stress; traumatic events such as divorce, assault, and the death of a child and depression. ... Education is associated with a higher likelihood of being employed, avoiding financial hardship, owning a home, and having employment-related health insurance. These resources have become progressively more concentrated among higher educated groups as the U.S. labor market has bifurcated in recent decades."
And while research has long shown that those
with more education are generally healthier — with lower rates of
obesity, and a higher likelihood of drinking in moderation — the
reasons for higher mortality rates among less educated and
jobless women goes beyond that.
Although the study doesn't offer all the reasons
why, it's a fact that unemployment can lead to a loss of a sense
of purpose and disconnection from the world — and other research
social isolation, and loss of purpose, has real health
implications. We all need something to
get us out of bed in the morning.