The Long-Term Mental Health Consequences of Psychological Career Arduousness

Details

Supervisors

Vandenberghe, Vincent

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences économiques, orientation économétrie, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

enPoor working conditions can adversely affect health and impose substantial costs on individuals and society. While many studies have documented the negative effects of physical job demands on health, fewer have explored the role of psychological work-related stressors. This study investigates the relationship between psychological risks accumulated over the course of a person’s career and mental health outcomes after age 50. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and detailed occupational information from O*NET, we link individual job histories to multidimensional measures of occupational arduousness and assess their association with late-life depressive symptoms. Our regression results show that long-term exposure to psychologically demanding work is significantly associated with a higher likelihood of depressive symptoms after age 50, while physical arduousness also raises risk, and cognitively engaging (information management intense) careers show a protective effect. Variance decomposition analyses reveal that, although occupational characteristics are statistically significant, their relative explanatory power is modest compared to current physical health.