Socioeconomic status and illness- and injury-related absence from work, the labour market activity survey

grantor: University of TorontoThe association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health has been found in a number of studies that vary by design, population, and measure of both SES and health. However, it is not clear how this relationship depends on the measure of SES or the measure of health. In addition, it is not clear whether there are in fact sex differences in the relationship between SES and health. This analysis explored the relationship between socioeconomic status and illness- and injury-related absence from work using a panel of 9521 paid workers from the 1988-1990 Statistics Canada Labour Market Activity Survey. Five measures of SES (individual income, family income, education, the Blishen socioeconomic index, and the Pineo-Porter prestige scale) were used to model the relationship between SES and rates of absence from work over the three-year study period. Poisson bivariate analyses revealed a stepwise relationship between SES and illness absence among males but little evidence of this relationship among females. The pattern for injury absence was again more evident for males, with the exception of the occupational measures which revealed a steeper relationship for female than males. The steepness of the relationship varied both by measure of SES, by outcome, and by sex. Combinations of indicators of SES in one model emphasized the independent effects of individual indicators of SES in relation to the outcome. Controlling for age, marital status, family size and a measure of income security reduced the strength of the relationship between socioeconomic status and each of the outcomes among males but strengthened the relationship among females, particularly for the combination of individual income and injury. Further investigation of these differences, accounting for the importance of family-level and job-level information, is needed to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the relationships between SES and health, and to critically assess the use of specific SES measures in population health research.Ph.D