Working Conditions, Lifestyles and Health

Elena Cottini, Università Bocconi
Paolo Ghinetti, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether employee health is affected by the environment in which the individual works - in terms of both physical and psychosocial working conditions - and by his or her lifestyle. Health measures are computed from Danish data, and refer to both self assessed general health and two more objective health measures: mental health specific to work-related problems, and physical health. We find that both bad working conditions and bad lifestyles reduce health, especially in its self-assessed component. The impact of lifetsyle indicators have a more modest health impact on both physical and mental health.