%0 Journal Article %J The Journals of Gerontology, Series B %D 2023 %T Aging on the job? The association between occupational characteristics and accelerated biological aging. %A Andrasfay, Theresa %A Jung K Kim %A Jennifer A Ailshire %A Crimmins, Eileen %K Biomarkers %K Functional age %K Psychosocial stress %K work-related issues %X

OBJECTIVES: There is a common belief that demanding jobs can make workers age faster, but there is little empirical evidence linking occupational characteristics to accelerated biological aging. We examine how occupational categorizations and self-reported working conditions are associated with expanded biological age, which incorporates 22 biomarkers and captures physiologic dysregulation throughout several bodily systems.

METHODS: Data are from 1,133 participants in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) who were aged 51-60 and working for pay in the 2010 or 2012 wave and who participated in the 2016 Venous Blood Study (VBS). We estimate associations between occupational category (professional/managerial, sales/clerical, service, and manual) and self-reported working conditions (psychosocial demands, job control, heavy lifting, and working 55 or more hours per week) and expanded biological age.

RESULTS: Compared to same-age individuals working in professional or managerial positions, those working in service jobs appear 1.65 years older biologically even after adjusting for social and economic characteristics, self-reported working conditions, health insurance, and lifestyle-related risk factors. Low job control is associated with 1.40 years, heavy lifting with 2.08 years, and long working hours with 1.87 years of accelerated biological aging.

DISCUSSION: Adverse occupational characteristics held at midlife, particularly service work, low job control, heavy lifting, and long work hours, are associated with accelerated biological aging. These findings suggest that work may be important for the overall aging process beyond its associations with specific diseases or risk factors.

%B The Journals of Gerontology, Series B %V 78 %P 1236-1245 %G eng %N 7 %R 10.1093/geronb/gbad055 %0 Journal Article %J Epigenetics %D 2023 %T Occupational characteristics and epigenetic aging among older adults in the United States. %A Andrasfay, Theresa %A Crimmins, Eileen %K Aged %K Aging %K DNA Methylation %K Epigenesis, Genetic %K ethnicity %K Humans %K United States %X

Occupational characteristics have been studied as risk factors for several age-related diseases and are thought to impact the ageing process, although there has been limited empirical work demonstrating an association between adverse occupational characteristics and accelerated ageing and this prior work has yielded mixed results. We used the 2010 and 2016 waves of the Health and Retirement Study ( = 1,251) to examine the association between occupation categories and self-reported working conditions of American adults at midlife and their subsequent epigenetic ageing as measured through five epigenetic clocks: PCHorvath, PCHannum, PCPhenoAge, PCGrimAge, and DunedinPACE. We found that individuals working in sales/clerical, service, and manual work show evidence of epigenetic age acceleration compared to those working in managerial/professional jobs and that the associations were stronger with second- and third-generation clocks. Individuals reporting high stress and high physical effort at work showed evidence of epigenetic age acceleration only on PCGrimAge and DunedinPACE. Most of these associations were attenuated after adjustment for race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and lifestyle-related risk factors. Sales/clerical work remained significantly associated with PCHorvath and PCHannum, while service work remained significantly associated with PCGrimAge. The results suggest that manual work and occupational physical activity may appear to be risk factors for epigenetic age acceleration through their associations with socioeconomic status, while stress at work may be a risk factor for epigenetic age acceleration through its associations with health behaviours outside of work. Additional work is needed to understand when in the life course and the specific mechanisms through which these associations occur.

%B Epigenetics %V 18 %P 2218763 %G eng %N 1 %R 10.1080/15592294.2023.2218763 %0 Journal Article %J Innovation and Aging %D 2023 %T Pain, Physical Demands at Work, and Future Work Expectations Among Older Adults in the United States. %A Andrasfay, Theresa %A Fennell, Gillian %A Crimmins, Eileen %K Disability %K Retirement %K Working Longer %X

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: In the United States, pain is becoming increasingly prevalent among older adults at the same time as policies are incentivizing work longer. Given that pain and physically demanding jobs are both linked to early retirement and they often go hand-in-hand, it is important to assess how the unique effects of pain and physical work demands may interact in predicting future work expectations.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Using Health and Retirement Study data (1998, 2004, 2010, and 2016 waves), we assess how pain and physical job demands influence future work expectations of 10,358 adults at midlife (ages 51-56), after accounting for sociodemographic, job, health, and financial characteristics.

RESULTS: Compared to men with no pain, activity-interfering pain was associated with low expectations of full-time work past 62 regardless of job demands, while noninterfering pain was associated with 62% higher odds (odds ratio [OR] = 1.62, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.35-1.93) of expecting not to work full-time past age 62 only among those with physically demanding jobs. Having both interfering pain and a physically demanding job was associated with increased odds of expecting not to work full-time past age 65 for men (OR = 1.25, 95% CI: 1.06-1.47) and past age 62 for women (OR = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.00-1.39).

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: The co-occurrence of physically demanding work with pain-particularly activity-interfering pain-is associated with low expectations of full-time work past ages 62 and 65 for adults at midlife. Working longer may be feasible for older adults whose pain does not interfere with work, but unrealistic for individuals facing both pain and physically demanding work.

%B Innovation and Aging %V 7 %P igad089 %G eng %N 10 %R 10.1093/geroni/igad089 %0 Report %D 2022 %T Constructing a Work History Dataset of Jobs Held During Early and Middle Adulthood Using the Health and Retirement Study %A Park, Sung S. %A Pratt, Boriana %A Pebley, Anne R. %A Goldman, Noreen %A Sheftel, Mara Getz %A Andrasfay, Theresa %A Lee, Keunbok %K Employment %K Functional limitations %K life course %K Occupation %X The Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) (https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/about) collects extensive data on current employment and occupation at each wave but data on occupations prior to the start of the survey are limited to an abbreviated job history in each respondent's first interview focused on recently held jobs. Therefore, using HRS data to link employment earlier in respondents' lives to socioeconomic, health, and other outcomes at older ages has been infeasible. The RAND Corporation created a dataset from the HRS Core and Exit Interviews called the RAND HRS Cross-Year Longitudinal file which is used by many researchers working with HRS. This dataset contains a variable called the "longest job held" for each respondent. However, this variable is the longest job held among the limited subset of jobs reported in HRS (most of which are recent) and not necessarily the longest job that the respondent has held to date. In 2017, HRS conducted a Life History Mail Survey (LHMS) of HRS respondents who had participated in the 2016 Core interview. The LHMS was conducted in three parts which, combined, include all of the 2016 Core interview respondents. The LHMS questionnaire was a pencil-paper survey completed and returned by respondents and included a grid asking %I UCLA: California Center for Population Research %C Los Angeles, CA %G eng %U https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bz58411 %0 Journal Article %J Work, Aging and Retirement %D 2021 %T Physical Work Exposures of Older Workers: Does Measurement Make a Difference? %A Andrasfay, Theresa %A Pebley, Anne R %A Goldman, Noreen %K Health Inequality %K long-term health consequences %K O*NET %K Older workers %K physical work %X Physically demanding work at later ages, which is especially prevalent among disadvantaged groups, is associated with long-term health outcomes and may contribute to health inequality over the life course. Past studies of these issues have relied on occupational characteristics from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), but few have assessed how O*NET compares to survey reports when measuring occupational exposures in analyses of socioeconomic status, work conditions, and health. We compare Health and Retirement Study (HRS, N = 16,683 working respondents) and O*NET measurements of general physical activity, frequency of lifting/handling objects, and frequency of stooping-related postures required at work. Pearson correlations between the HRS items and corresponding O*NET items vary from weak to moderate for lifting/handling and stooping-related postures to relatively large for general physical activity. Though they are measured on different scales, both the HRS and O*NET measures of physical demands reveal similar sex, racial/ethnic, and educational differentials in exposure to physically strenuous work. We fit random effects Poisson models to assess how these measures predict accumulation of functional limitations, a potential long-term consequence of strenuous working conditions. Comparable HRS and O*NET measures have similar associations with functional limitations. We also consider an average of physical demand items available in O*NET, finding that this measure has similar associations with functional limitations as the O*NET measure of general physical activity. These results suggest that O*NET characteristics and HRS respondent reports produce comparable disparities in physical work exposures (PWEs) and associations between physically demanding work and declines in physical functioning. %B Work, Aging and Retirement %P waab014 %@ 2054-4650 %G eng %R 10.1093/workar/waab014 %0 Journal Article %J PLoS One %D 2021 %T Trajectories of physical functioning among older adults in the US by race, ethnicity and nativity: Examining the role of working conditions. %A Pebley, Anne R %A Goldman, Noreen %A Andrasfay, Theresa %A Pratt, Boriana %K ethnicity %K nativity %K physical functioning %K race %X

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.

%B PLoS One %V 16 %P e0247804 %G eng %N 3 %R 10.1371/journal.pone.0247804 %0 Journal Article %J Social Science & Medicine %D 2020 %T Physical functioning and survival: Is the link weaker among Latino and black older adults? %A Andrasfay, Theresa %A Goldman, Noreen %K Functional limitations %K Mortality %K physical functioning %K Race/ethnicity %X Measures of physical functioning are among the strongest predictors of mortality, but no previous study has assessed whether the predictive value of such measures varies by race/ethnicity, as has been done for the simple self-rated health question. The current study tests whether the relationship between two measures of physical functioning (the number of self-reported functional limitations and measured walking speed) and mortality is weaker (has a lower hazard ratio) for Latinos and blacks than for whites. Data were drawn from the 1998–2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, with mortality follow-up through 2016. We used Cox hazard models with household random effects to test for interactions between race/ethnicity and these measures of physical functioning and verified earlier findings for self-rated health. The number of self-reported functional limitations is significantly related to mortality for all racial/ethnic groups, but has a substantially lower hazard ratio for blacks and Latinos than for whites, as hypothesized. This hazard ratio remains lower for blacks and Latinos after adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics and health conditions. These findings suggest that the higher rates of functional limitations observed among Latinos and blacks compared with whites may reflect a history of strenuous physical work, inadequately controlled pain, lower leisure-time physical activity, or untreated/under-treated mobility problems that can lead to reduced physical performance without necessarily having a substantial effect on mortality risk. On the other hand, we do not detect significant racial/ethnic differences in the association between measured walking speed and subsequent mortality. This may be the result of the smaller sample size for the walking speed tests, the more nuanced nature of the continuous walking speed measure, or the fact that the walking speed test captures only a subset of the limitations included in the self-reports. %B Social Science & Medicine %V 255 %P 112983 %G eng %R 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112983