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.