Psychology of women who get low income.
New Study Links Low Wages With Hypertension, Especially
for Women and Younger Workers
Workers earning the lowest wages have a higher risk of
hypertension than workers with the highest wages, according to new research
from UC Davis.
The correlation between wages and hypertension was
especially strong among women and persons between the ages of 25 to 44.
"We were surprised that low wages were such a strong
risk factor for two populations not typically associated with hypertension,
which is more often linked with being older and male," said J. Paul Leigh,
senior author of the study and professor of public health sciences at UC Davis.
"Our outcome shows that women and younger employees working at the lowest
pay scales should be screened regularly for hypertension as well."
The study, published in the December issue of the
European Journal of Public Health, is believed to be the first to isolate the
role of wages in hypertension, which occurs when the force of circulating blood
against artery walls is too high. According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, hypertension affects approximately 1 in 3 adults in the U.S.
and costs more than $90 billion each year in health-care services, medications
and missed work days. It also is a major contributor to heart disease and
stroke, both of which are leading causes of death and disability.
While there is a known association between lower
socioeconomic status (SES) and hypertension, determining the specific reason
for that association has been difficult, according to Leigh. Other researchers
have focused on factors such as occupation, job strain, education and insurance
coverage, with unclear results. Leigh's study was the first to focus on wages
and hypertension.
"By isolating a direct and fundamental aspect of
work that people greatly value, we were able to shed light on the relationship
between SES and circulatory health," said Leigh. "Wages are also a
part of the employment environment that easily can be changed. Policymakers can
raise the minimum wage, which tends to increase wages overall and could have
significant public-health benefits."
In conducting the study, the team used data from the
Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a highly regarded database in social science.
This longitudinal, representative study of families in the United States
includes information on wages, employment and health, including hypertension
status. The team used information from a total of 5,651 household heads and
their spouses for three time periods: 1999-2001, 2001-03 and 2003-05. The
sample was limited to working adults between 25 and 65 years of age. Anyone
with hypertension during the first year (e.g., 1999) of each time period was
eliminated from the final sample.
Wages were calculated as annual income from all sources
divided by work hours and ranged from about $2.38 to $77 per hour in 1999
dollars. Hypertension was determined by respondents' self-reports of a
hypertension diagnosis from their physicians.
The team used logistic regressions for the statistical
analysis, and found that doubling the wage was associated with a 16 percent
decrease in the risk of a hypertension diagnosis. Doubling the wage reduced the
risk of a hypertension diagnosis by 1.2 percent over two years and 0.6 percent
for one year.
"That means that if there were 110 million persons
employed in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 65 per year during the entire
timeframe of the study -- from 1999 until 2005 -- then a 10 percent increase in
everyone's wages would have resulted in 132,000 fewer cases of hypertension
each year," said Leigh.
Additional logistic regression analyses by demographics
such as age, gender, race and co-morbidities such as obesity, diabetes and
alcohol consumption revealed two standout outcomes. Being in the youngest age
group -- between 25 and 44 years old -- or being female were strong predictors
of hypertension. In fact, doubling the wages of younger workers was associated
with a 25 to 30 percent decrease in the risk of a hypertension diagnosis, and
doubling the wages of women was associated with a 30 to 35 percent decrease in
the risk of a hypertension diagnosis.
Leigh said that a potential limitation of the study
regarding the gender disparity was its reliance on respondents' self-reports of
hypertension diagnoses.
"Other research has shown that women are more likely
than men to report a health diagnosis," said Leigh. "However, the
longitudinal nature of the data used in our study helps mitigate that natural bias,
and self-reports of health do typically correlate with clinical data."
Leigh recommends additional research using different
national data sets to investigate the potential relationship between low wages
and hypertension.
"If the outcomes are the same, we could have
identified a way to help reduce the costs and personal impact of a major health
crisis," said Leigh.
The study's co-author was Juan Du, who recently completed
her Ph.D. in economics at UC Davis.
The study was funded in part by the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health (grants R01 H008248-01 and U54 OH007550-11).
image source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/511610
Post a Comment