Long Working Hours and the Risk of Chronic Disease

Abstract

A change in employment trends, in the nature of occupation and in the number of working hours has an impact on the diseases prevalent in people. Using data from a World Health Organization 2007 study on global ageing and adult health, this research looks at the effect of past work histories on the prevalence of selected chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, stroke, angina and depression in India. By using a bivariate and multivariate analysis, this study shows that all the selected chronic diseases were significantly higher in urban areas, especially amongst people who were educated upto a higher secondary level and above and were from the richest wealth quintile. The chances of all these selected chronic diseases, except for depression, were also found to be significantly higher among those who were working in the non-manual sector. It was also found that the expected odds of having diabetes and stroke were significantly higher among those employees who worked for more than eight hours a day than their counterparts who worked for less than eight hours a day after adjusting important confounders. Based on these findings, the study suggests that the government should implement some specific policy measures; and take steps which will help employees cope with harmful work schedules.