Employment, non-employment and health

The 1980s and 1990s were a period of improving life expectancy in the population of Great Britain, combined with a sharp increase in the proportion of men who were economically inactive due to ill-health. In order to address this apparent contradiction, this paper examines a series of health measures in two independent, stratified random samples of men aged 20-59, taken from cross-sectional population surveys of England in 1984 and 2001. It compares, in each year, levels of health according to these measures amongst the employed with those in the unemployed and permanently sick. It finds that for many conditions there was a particularly large improvement among men who were economically inactive and unemployed, greater than that in the employed. By 2001, health in unemployed men in several respects was superior to that of the employed. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to understanding some paradoxes in the British labour market in the early 1980s, such as the relationship between unemployment and wage inflation.