The influence of work, household structure, and social, personal and material resources on gender differences in health: an analysis of the 1994 Canadian National Population Health Survey
Section snippets
Work, resources and health
Paid work is associated, on average, with better physical and mental health for both men and women (Arber, 1997; Ross & Bird, 1994; Waldron, 1991; Walters, Lenton, & McKeary, 1995). Yet such general findings may obscure health differences that emerge from the nature of the job and the social organization of work. Within the demand-control model, for instance, it is argued that production processes that simplify and routinize closely supervised tasks create working conditions that impair health (
Data
The NPHS is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of household residents in Canada initiated in 1994. In each of just over 20,000 households, limited information was collected from all household members and one individual, aged 12 years and older, was selected for a more in-depth interview. The initial household response rate was 88.7 percent, while the selected person response rate was 96.1 percent. More information on the sample design is available in Tamblay and Catlin
Results
In the following sections we report on the two types of analysis we conducted in an effort to understand gender differences in the experience of distress, migraines and arthritis/rheumatism.
Discussion
When we embarked on this research we expected to find some gender differences in health, though less marked and more variable than is often assumed. This was borne out. We also expected to find that gender differences in features of paid work and household structure, as well as social, material and personal resources would help to explain the gender differences in health that we did observe. Yet, they were not central in accounting for disparities in health.5
Acknowledgements
The National Network on Environments and Women's Health (NNEWH) provided funding for the research reported here. NNEWH is a Centre of Excellence for Women's Health based at York University and funded by the Women's Health Bureau of Health Canada.
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