The Impact of Occupational Sex Segregation on Workers’ and Their Partners’ Health: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

• In Event: 41021 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 15: Environmental and Occupational Health

Abstract

Sex segregation is a prominent feature of our modern economy. While the increased participation of women in the workforce has reduced this in some occupations, many industries remain substantially sex segregated, and sex segregation is likely to remain a prominent feature of future work. This paper examines the effect of workers’ occupation on worker and partner health in two sex-segregated industries, construction and extraction (CE) and domestic and commercial cleaning services. Using the Health and Retirement Study, I used generalized ordinal logistic regression models of self-reported worker health and self-reported spouse or partner health on worker’s current occupation with demographic controls (age, race, sex, years of education, and household income) and health controls (BMI and whether the participant smokes in the current wave) for each occupation. For workers only, I added measures physical strain on the job (requiring heavy lifting, being physically demanding, and requiring stooping / kneeling). I then repeated this analysis with CE or cleaning services as the job for which workers had the longest tenure to test for delayed presentation of health problems. Both CE and cleaning services were found to be sex segregated (96.45% male in CE; 99.03% female in cleaning services). Employment in construction and extraction was not associated with lower odds of good health; however, partners of these workers were 70-83% as likely to have good health as partners of workers in other industries. In the opposite case, employment in cleaning services made workers 56-62% as likely to have good health but had no effect on partner health. As partnerships in these industries are almost exclusively heterosexual, the female side of the partnership in both occupations fare substantially worse in their health outcomes.

Author

• Jordana Lyon Clayton, University of Utah