Job Satisfaction Developmental Trajectories and Health: A Life Course Perspective

• In Event: 439 - Regular Session. Population Health

Abstract

We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY79) to examine how heterogeneity in job satisfaction developmental trajectories of individuals starting at age 25 and ending at age 39 influence health outcomes after the age of 40. The application of job satisfaction developmental trajectories affords us several advantages over past research. First, the incorporation of life course models allows us to observe if prolonged job satisfaction has a greater beneficial effect on health outcomes compared to intermittingly experienced levels of job satisfaction. If the effect of prolonged job satisfaction is greater, we can analyze whether this effect is strong enough to influence physical health more than the non-existent to modest relationship found in past studies (Faragher, Cass, and Cooper, 2005; Heslop, et al, 2002). The effects of job satisfaction developmental trajectories are assessed on several mental and physical health outcomes. Second, the estimation of the job satisfaction trajectories themselves affords us the ability to see what factors can influence membership and which groups are more likely to belong to a particular trajectory. Finally, trajectory analysis also allows us to include both the working and non-working population in our health models in contrast to prior studies that mainly include only the working population (Nakata, Irie, and Takahashi, 2013; Amati et al, 2010; Fischer and Sousa-Poza, 2009; Heslop, et al, 2002).

Authors

• Jonathan Dirlam, Ohio State University

• Hui Zheng, The Ohio State University