Unequal Exposure to Occupational Stress across the Life Course: The Intersection of Race/Ethnicity and Gender

Abstract

Work, a segregated social context in the United States, may be an important source of differential exposure to stress by race/ethnicity, but existing research does not systematically describe variation in exposure to occupational stress by race/ethnicity. Using work history data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and occupational-level measures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Occupational Information Network, the authors document the extent to which the race/ethnicity and gender composition of occupational categories varies by level of occupational strain and how life-course exposure to occupational strain differs by race/ethnicity and gender. Black and Latino workers are overrepresented in high-strain jobs at many ages, compared with other groups. Exposure to job strain across working ages shows more variation in exposure by gender and race/ethnicity groups than static measures. These findings point to potential bias in research using a single, cross-sectional measure of job stress.