The Social Stratification of Job Stress: How Social Structures Create Health Disparity

Abstract

Purpose

The “Social Determinants of Health” construct is well-entrenched in the way that both health care providers and researchers think about the effects of social conditions on health. Although there are a number of theories that fall under this rubric for the social production of health and illness, the core of this construct is the idea that social stratification leads to health disparity. In this chapter we show how such a mechanism might work for relating social stratification and job stress.

Methodology/approach

We used the pooled 2002, 2006, 2010 Quality of Work Life modules of the General Social Survey to test a model of the relationships between gender, age, education, and nativity with “bad jobs” and indicators of health status.

Findings

Findings show that social status is positively associated with job quality and with health in turn. Lower social status characteristics are related to bad jobs and poorer health.

Research limitations/implications

Health disparities are thus “explained” by the consequences of social status for occupation and job quality, thereby depicting exactly how health disparities arise in normal social life. The theory and results underscore the importance of explicitly modeling social status factors in explanations of health disparities.

Social implications

It is common to relate health disparities to social status but it is not common to show the mechanisms whereby social status actually produces health disparities. Addressing health disparities means addressing the consequences of social inequalities for normal activities of social life such as work. Improving job quality would be a health “treatment” that addresses health disparities.

Originality/value

This chapter demonstrates the value of explicitly tracing the consequences of status differences on differences in social context such as work conditions and then health. In the study of health disparities this is not often done. In this chapter we show how social inequality leads to occupational and job quality differences that, in turn, lead to health differences.

Citation

Tausig, M. and Fenwick, R. (2016), "The Social Stratification of Job Stress: How Social Structures Create Health Disparity", Special Social Groups, Social Factors and Disparities in Health and Health Care (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 34), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 261-286. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0275-495920160000034014