- Project number: F 2295
- Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
- Status: Completed Project
Description:
In light of the demographic ageing as well as the changing and accelerating working life, the health status of the working population, particularly of the older one, is a crucial factor for Germany's future economic and social development. Work and health influence each other in both directions - positively as well as negatively. So far, it has been widely neglected that the interrelation between work and health may be different in younger compared to older workers. Closing the respective gap in knowledge and research is the aim of the present project.
A first - quantitative - project component will therefore analyze and explain the influence that work has on health focusing on age differences by using existing secondary (mostly German) data sets (e.g. cross-sectional data). Then, time trends with respect to work exposure and health will be examined by using longitudinal data. Subsequently, a measurement methodology will be developed to disentangle age-, period-and cohort-effects of changes and thus to allow for developing prognostic estimates about the development of work and health in (sub)populations.
The second - qualitative - project component will be addressing the inverse effect, namely the influence health has on work. By interviewing persons who have prematurely terminated their working life as well as persons who are working beyond their personal retirement age, patterns of attitude and behaviour will be identified.
Both components of the project will benefit from a mutual professional exchange and will moreover be closely linked to the German cohort study "leben in der Arbeit" (lidA).
