Abstract
Latinos in the US live significantly longer than non-Latino whites, but spend more years disabled. Differentials in socioeconomic status account for part, but not all, of the difference in older age disability between Latinos and whites. We hypothesize that a factor often ignored in the literature—the fact that Latinos, on average, have more physically strenuous jobs than non-Latino whites—contributes to the higher Latino risk of functional limitations at older ages. We use longitudinal data from the 1998–2014 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) comprising 17,297 respondents. Compared to US-born whites, Latinos, especially Latino immigrants, report substantially higher levels of physical effort at work. Latino-black differences are much smaller than Latino-white differences. As hypothesized, physical work effort is strongly related to functional limitations. However, differentials in physical work effort for Latinos and whites in their fifties and early sixties are weakly related to Latino-white differentials in FL at later ages.
Highlights
Latinos in the US live significantly longer than non-Latino whites [1], they spend more years disabled
In terms of differentials in the work environment by race/ethnicity and nativity (REN), we focus on physical work conditions because they are especially likely to be associated with musculoskeletal and other functional limitations (FL)-related conditions
The main part of the analysis addresses the other goals described in the introduction: (a) investigating the association between work effort and functional limitations and (b) whether REN differentials in physical work effort can account for REN differentials in older age functional limitations
Summary
Latinos in the US live significantly longer than non-Latino whites [1], they spend more years disabled. Most research on the determinants of disability and FL ignores another potentially important mechanism: substantial differences in the work environment for Latinos (especially foreign-born), whites, and workers from other ethnic groups, and the cumulative effects of differential physical and psychological work conditions on older age FL and disability [9,10,11]. We examine racial, ethnic, and nativity (hereafter REN) differentials in limitations in physical functioning (e.g., walking, lifting), rather than in disability per se. This paper is the first to investigate whether racial/ethnic, nativity, and gender differentials in strenuous physical work are associated with subsequent trajectories of older age functional limitations in a nationally representative sample of the US population. Despite the extensive occupational health and safety literature [11, 19] research on the relationship between differential work conditions by REN and SES and long term health is limited [14, 22]
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