Employment status and health in Spain before and after the Great Recession

This article analyzes the relationship between employment status (ES), on one hand, and self-rated health and psychological distress, on the other, in the context of the Great Recession beginning in 2008. For this purpose, it is necessary to move beyond the employment/unemployment dichotomy characteristics of previous theories and research concerning the relationship between the labor market, recession, and health. The authors use data from the Spanish National Health Surveys in 2006 (n = 15,128), before the crisis, and in 2012 (n = 11,124), when its consequences had taken effect. The results of the regression analysis indicate a structural change in the relationship between ES and health. Health inequality patterns changed during the crisis, with increased deterioration in the health of unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed, and self-employed workers. Health inequalities were reduced for temporary workers. The results support the idea that the structure of the association between ES and health varies according to the economic cycle. The association between recession, ES, and health would be directly related to the specific characteristics of the economic and employment contexts under study. In the Spanish case, labor market segmentation processes based on numerical flexibility—a key feature of the Mediterranean Variety of Capitalism—may explain the results obtained.

Discovering complex interrelationships between socioeconomic status and health in Europe: A case study applying Bayesian Networks

Studies assume that socioeconomic status determines individuals’ states of health, but how does health determine socioeconomic status? And how does this association vary depending on contextual differences? To answer this question, our study uses an additive Bayesian Networks model to explain the interrelationships between health and socioeconomic determinants using complex and messy data. This model has been used to find the most probable structure in a network to describe the interdependence of these factors in five European welfare state regimes. The advantage of this study is that it offers a specific picture to describe the complex interrelationship between socioeconomic determinants and health, producing a network that is controlled by socio demographic factors such as gender and age. The present work provides a general framework to describe and understand the complex association between socioeconomic determinants and health.