Employment outcomes for older adults aged 50-74 by major local industry typology and the health of a place: findings from the ONS Longitudinal Study 2001-2011

Objectives

Poor health at the individual and area level has been shown to be associated with earlier labour market exit. This paper builds on work demonstrating that health in a place is associated with higher chances of work exit for older workers even once their own health is taken into account. This paper looks at an additional risk factor for work exit: industrial mix.

Study Design

Data was drawn from the full 2011 Census and an approximately 1.1 % representative sample from England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study from 2001 to 2011.

Methods

We analysed people aged 40–64 in paid work in 2001 and measured their employment outcomes in 2011, at ages 50–74. Four industrial landscape clusters were derived by K-means cluster analysis using industry mix for 348 local authorities from 2011 Census. ‘Health of a place’ was measured using 2001 Census data for the usually resident population aged 50–74 years, the proportion who reported ‘fair’, ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ self-rated health (as opposed to ‘good’ or ‘very good’) was calculated and split into tertiles.

Results

Work exit showed industrial landscape and area health inequalities. Older workers in healthy service sector areas in London had the lowest work exit chances with a gradient to those in unhealthy rural areas having the highest chance of work exit.

Conclusions

More research is required to investigate why, in areas where the same types of industry dominate, the health of the local population was associated with differing odds of work exit.