The relationship between diabetes, diabetes-related complications and productive activities among older Europeans

AIMS: To assess the impact of diabetes and diabetes-related complications on two measures of productivity for people in the labour force and out of it, namely “being afraid health limits ability to work before retirement” and “volunteering”. METHODS AND DATA: Logistic regressions were run to test the impact of diabetes and its complications on the probability of being afraid health limits work and being a formal volunteer. The longitudinal sample for the former outcome includes 53,631 observations, clustered in 34,393 individuals, aged 50–65 years old whereas the latter consists of 45,384 observations, grouped in 29,104 individuals aged 65 and above across twelve European countries taken from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, from 2006 to 2013. RESULTS: Diabetes increased the probability of being afraid health limited work by nearly 11% points, adjusted by clinical complications, and reduced the likelihood of being a formal volunteer by 2.7% points, additionally adjusted by mobility problems. We also found that both the probability of being afraid health limits work and the probability of being a formal volunteer increased during and after the crisis. Moreover, having diabetes had a larger effect on being afraid health limits work during the year 2010, possibly related to the financial crisis. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that diabetes significantly affects the perception of people regarding the effects of their condition on work, increasing the fear that health limits their ability to work, especially during the crisis year 2010, as well as the participation in volunteering work among retired people. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10198-017-0911-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.