Women's long work hours may shorten their lives
Ohio:
Women who put in long hours for the bulk of their careers may pay a
steep price: life-threatening illnesses, including heart disease and
cancer.
Work weeks that averaged 60 hours or more over three decades appear
to triple the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart trouble and arthritis for
women, according to new research from The Ohio State University.
The risk begins to climb when women put in more than 40 hours and
takes a decidedly bad turn above 50 hours, researchers found.
"Women - especially women who have to juggle multiple roles - feel
the effects of intensive work experiences and that can set the table for
a variety of illnesses and disability," said Allard Dembe, professor of
health services management and policy and lead author of the study,
published online this week in the Journal of Occupational and
Environmental Medicine.
"People don't think that much about how their early work experiences
affect them down the road," he said. "Women in their 20s, 30s and 40s
are setting themselves up for problems later in life."Men with tough
work schedules appeared to fare much better, found the researchers, who
analyzed data from interviews with almost 7,500 people who were part of
the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
Women tend to take on the lion's share of family responsibility and
may face more pressure and stress than men when they work long hours,
previous research shows. On top of that, work for women may be less
satisfying because of the need to balance work demands with family
obligations, Dembe said.Employers and government regulators should be
aware of the risks, especially to women who are required to regularly
toil beyond a 40-hour work week, he said. Companies benefit in terms of
quality of work and medical costs when their workers are healthier,
Dembe said.
More scheduling flexibility and on-the-job health coaching, screening
and support could go a long way toward reducing the chances employees
become sick or die as a result of chronic conditions, he said.
The researchers analyzed the relationship between serious disease and
hours worked over a 32-year period.
Previous research has shown that workers who put in long hours face
more stress, have more sleep and digestive trouble and are more
fatigued. Their work performance suffers and they have more injuries on
the job. But prior to this study, efforts to examine a connection
between long hours and chronic illness have had mixed results, in large
part because it's difficult to obtain long-term data on work patterns
and health, Dembe said.
This study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
1979, administered by Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research
and sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which includes
interviews with more than 12,000 Americans born between 1957 and 1964.
Dembe and his collaborator, Mayo Clinic researcher and former Ohio
State doctoral student Xiaoxi Yao, examined data for survey participants
who were at least 40 in 1998, when interview questions began to include
questions about health status and chronic conditions.
They averaged the self-reported hours worked each week over 32 years
and compared the hours worked to the incidence of eight chronic
diseases: heart disease, cancer (except skin cancer), arthritis or
rheumatism, diabetes or high blood sugar, chronic lung disease including
bronchitis or emphysema, asthma, depression and high blood pressure.
They also examined the results by gender.
A minority of the full-time workers in the study put in 40 hours or
fewer per week. Fifty-six percent worked an average of 41 to 50 hours;
13 percent worked an average of 51-60 hours; and 3 percent averaged more
than 60 hours.
The results among female workers were striking, Dembe said. The
analysis found a clear and strong relationship between long hours and
heart disease, cancer, arthritis and diabetes.
Men who worked long hours had a higher incidence of arthritis, but
none of the other chronic diseases. And those men who worked moderately
long hours (41 to 50 hours weekly) had lower risk of heart disease, lung
disease and depression than those who worked 40 hours or fewer.
Because the data addresses chronic diseases reported by age 40 or 50,
this study speaks only to early-onset disease and doesn't shed light on
the possible associations between long hours and lifetime risks, which
could prove even more profound, Dembe said.
"The early onset and identification of chronic diseases may not only
reduce individuals' life expectancy and quality of life, but also
increase health care costs in the long term," Dembe and Yao wrote in the
paper.
One limitation of the study is that it relies on average hours per
week and doesn't provide answers about the differences between those who
consistently worked long hours and those whose careers were full of long
hours at first but who found themselves with more free time later on,
the researchers said.
- Ohio State University |