Night Work and Sustainable Working Life—A Prospective Trajectory Analysis of Swedish Twins

Abstract

The aim was to investigate the changes in sustainable working life over 10–13 years of follow-up and the effect of baseline night work. Data from the Swedish national registers were used to define sustainable working life. Survey data in the 1998–2003 “SALT” with 34,680 twins or in the 2004–2006 “STAGE” with 19,637 twins were utilized to assess night work at baseline. Group-based trajectory and multinomial regression models were applied. The results of the SALT cohort yielded five trajectory solutions: stable sustainable working life (40%), stable lack of sustainable working life (25%), later decreasingly sustainable working life (15%), increasingly sustainable working life (14%), and early decreasingly sustainable working life (7%). In the STAGE cohort, four trajectories were detected: stable sustainable working life (83%), decreasingly sustainable working life (7%), stable lack of sustainable working life (5%), and increasing sustainable working life (5%). Night work was associated with the decreasing or increasing sustainable working life in the trajectory groups. To conclude, the largest parts of both cohorts followed trajectories of stable sustainable working lives. Night work was associated with both the trajectories of decreasing and increasing sustainable working lives.