Employment status and perceived health condition: longitudinal data from Italy

BACKGROUND The considerable increase of non-standard labor contracts, unemployment and inactivity rates raises the question of whether job insecurity and the lack of job opportunities affect physical and mental well-being differently from being employed with an open-ended contract. In this paper we offer evidence on the relationship between self-reported health and the employment status in Italy using the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW); another aim is to investigate whether these potential inequalities have changed with the recent economic downturn (time period 2006-2010). METHODS We estimate an ordered logit model with self-reported health status (SRHS) as response variable based on a fixed-effects approach which has certain advantages with respect to the random-effects formulation: the fixed-effects nature of the model also allows us to solve the problems of incidental parameters and non-random selection of individuals into different labor market categories. RESULTS We find that temporary workers, first-job seekers and unemployed individuals are worse off than permanent employees, especially males, young workers, and those living in the center and south of Italy. CONCLUSION Health inequalities between permanent workers and job seekers widen over time for male and young workers, and arise in the north of the country as well.