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Health is distributed unequally by occupation. Workers on a lower rung of the occupational ladder report worse health, have a higher probability of disability and die earlier than workers higher up the occupational hierarchy. Using a theoretical framework that unveils some of the potential mechanisms underlying these disparities, three core insights emerge: (i) there is selection into occupation on the basis of initial wealth, education and health, (ii) there will be behavioural responses to adverse working conditions, which can have compensating or reinforcing effects on health and (iii) workplace conditions increase health inequalities if workers with initially low socio-economic status choose harmful occupations and don’t offset detrimental health effects. We provide empirical illustrations of these insights using data for the Netherlands and assess the evidence available in the economics literature.

The paper addresses the question of the contribution made by health service institutions towards the perpetuation of gender inequality within health occupations.

Institutions that enable the medical profession to exercise influence over the working, training and examination practices of other health occupations will be looked at in their role as sustaining the dominance of the medical profession over all other health services. Statistically analysing the proportions of women and men in health occupations the paper examines whether this is a gender‐specific form of dominance. Using an institutionalist actor‐centred approach it will be examined whether the stability of the subordination of the allied occupations depends on whether the medical profession is also a corporate actor allotted a central steering function in the governance of the health system. A comparison is made between Germany and Italy.

In Germany and Italy physicians fulfil the criteria for professional dominance. It is shown that in both countries there exists a gender‐specific segregation across the health occupations, women being under‐represented in the profession of physician, and greatly over‐represented in the subordinate occupations. Therefore, the dominance of the medical profession is gender‐specific. The dominance of the medical profession in Germany is reinforced by several institutions with the consequence of stagnation in the traditional relationship between physicians and allied health occupations. In Italy, more self‐determination of the allied health occupations in the areas of training and examination has become a distinct possibility.

This is the first paper to assess the impact of health care institutions on gender inequality within the health services.

The purpose of this study is to categorize perfectionism and determine how perfectionism impacts the occupations and perceived health of students in a Bachelor of Science in Occupational Science program.

A descriptive study with a survey component was conducted. Participants were categorized as perfectionists or non-perfectionists using the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R). Time logs were collected to compare categories of time-use between groups over a one-week period. An online survey was conducted with a sub-sample of the perfectionists.

More students were categorized as perfectionists (N = 41) than non-perfectionists (N = 3). Both groups spent similar amounts of time engaged in productive, pleasurable and restorative occupations. Some perfectionists reported that perfectionism supported health, but others reported negative impacts on well-being.

This study included a small sample size limited to one Occupational Science program in the USA.

Results demonstrated positive and negative health impacts because of perfectionism. The majority of participants were identified as perfectionists; rigorous academic programs may attract students with perfectionistic qualities. Findings are relevant for Occupational Therapy, as these students will become future occupational therapists after completing a Master’s program in Occupational Therapy and may be susceptible to negative outcomes associated with perfectionism such as workaholism and poor health.

The COVID-19 pandemic stressed the health care sector's longstanding pain points, including the poor quality of frontline work and the staffing challenges that result from it. This has renewed interest in technology-centered approaches to achieving not only the “Triple Aim” of reducing costs while raising access and quality but also the “Quadruple Aim” of doing so without further squeezing wages and abrading job quality for frontline workers.

How can we leverage technology toward the achievement of the Quadruple Aim? I view this as a “grand challenge” for health care managers and policymakers. Those looking for guidance will find that most analyses of the workforce impact of technological change consider broad classes of technology such as computers or robots outside of any particular industry context. Further, they typically predict changes in work or labor market outcomes will come about at some ill-defined point in the medium to long run. This decontextualization and detemporization proves markedly problematic in the health care sector: the nonmarket, institutional factors driving technology adoption and implementation loom especially large in frontline care delivery, and managers and policymakers understandably must consider a well-defined, near-term, i.e., 5–10-year, time horizon.

This study is predicated on interviews with hospital and home health agency administrators, union representatives, health care information technology (IT) experts and consultants, and technology developers. I detail the near-term drivers and anticipated workforce impact of technological changes in frontline care delivery. With my emergent prescriptions for managers and policymakers, I hope to guide sectoral actors in using technology to address the “grand challenge” inherent to achieving the Quadruple Aim.

Economists and sociologists have proposed arguments for why there can exist wage penalties for work involving helping and caring for others, penalties borne disproportionately by women. Evidence on wage penalties is neither abundant nor compelling. We examine wage differentials associated with caring jobs using multiple years of Current Population Survey (CPS) earnings files matched to O*NET job descriptors that provide continuous measures of “assisting & caring” and “concern” for others across all occupations. This approach differs from prior studies that assume occupations either do or do not require a high level of caring. Cross-section and longitudinal analyses are used to examine wage differences associated with the level of caring, conditioned on worker, location, and job attributes. Wage level estimates suggest substantive caring penalties, particularly among men. Longitudinal estimates based on wage changes among job switchers indicate smaller wage penalties, our preferred estimate being a 2% wage penalty resulting from a one standard deviation increase in our caring index. We find little difference in caring wage gaps across the earnings distribution. Measuring mean levels of caring across the U.S. labor market over nearly thirty years, we find a steady upward trend, but overall changes are small and there is no evidence of convergence between women and men.

There has been an increase in swimming in natural bodies of water as reported in personal qualitative accounts. However, limited academic research has explored the meaning of this occupation. Engaging with nature, exercising and being part of a community contribute to better mental and physical health. The purpose of this research was to explore the meaning that adults attribute to open-water swimming in natural bodies of water.

This study used phenomenological interviews to explore the meaning that five adults attribute to open-water swimming.

Open-water swimming contributes to meaning-making in many ways. Participants reported swimming as necessary for maintaining mental and emotional well-being and forming meaningful connections with the social environment, nature and their true selves.

This study contributes to the understanding of the meaning of open-water swimming for adults in Ireland. Understanding the meaning of this occupation may add to the body of evidence exploring blue-space to promote health.

Open-water swimming is an occupation growing in popularity. This is the first paper to explore open-water swimming from an occupational perspective. This may provide an alternative perspective for viewing blue-space engagement and understanding the relationship between health, blue-space occupations and our oceans.

This article aims to look first at how entrepreneurial identity fits into the picture we currently have of social and health care professionals who most often work in paid employment in the public sector, and second, how entrepreneurial identity is constructed. We discuss whether professional identity and entrepreneurial identity can be separated, and how meaningful that question is. Is the role of entrepreneurship limited in the context of health and social care professional services, or can we see the emergence of a new kind of entrepreneurial identity with special features related to the complexity within the provision of services in social and health care?

The materials from two previous studies by the authors are used in the article as empirical data to investigate the questions of identity and professionalism. The methodology is based on re‐reading and re‐interpretation of both empirical studies and theoretical literature.

There are differences and different logics of work‐related identity building among the entrepreneurial groups and among professional groups. Despite this and even if part of the research tradition emphasizes this difference and the separateness of these identities, we argue that identities are fluid, changing, layered and overlapping. As identities cannot be predetermined or classified according to economic earnings logic only, but that they are malleable, evolving, interconnected, and intertwined. In addition, the paper raises the contradiction of stereotypically “masculine” entrepreneurial goals and the stereotypically “female” ideology of care existing as tension within entrepreneurship in social and health care.

The research limitations relate to the research design of not using ethnographical data.

The article has no direct practical implications. The results might have relevance to education.

The article has social implications in the ways the identities are discussed through various discourses in the societies.

The article has both originality in the settings and value in bringing different discussions together, as well as in its ability to widen the theoretical discussions and empirical studies on identities, paid employment and entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of social suffering among a non-random sample of Canadian women working in socially and economically marginalized “frontline” service occupations. Participants identified a number of health concerns that they link to the everyday suffering they endure – i.e. feeling inadequate, incompetent, lonely, self-conscious, disenfranchised or dissatisfied. The complex etiology of these women's suffering bars many from finding appropriate health care. As a result, there are health disparities among our vulnerable populations. While they often articulated a desire for alternative/complementary care, the Canadian health care system does not currently fund these services and many of the women are unable to afford the out-of-pocket costs.

Harriet Martineau analyzed the structural characteristics associated with health, sickness, medicine, occupations, and the bureaucratic administration of health care in her later writings. I concentrate here on two major examples of this type of work: England and Her Soldiers (1859a) and Health, Husbandry, and Handicraft (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1861). In this type of study, in contrast to her early non-fiction, her own illnesses and bodily difficulties are invisible. Her sympathy with the sick and ill, nonetheless, helped her maintain her interest in the topic and her sense of mission to document and discuss it.

Martineau was aided in this work through a close alliance with Florence Nightingale and together they created a public sociology with a major social impact on health, war, and occupations delivering health care. Their intellectual and personal alliance is one of the first examples of female sociologists successfully co-ordinating their work for the common good, a model also applicable to their female successors at Hull-House and the University of Chicago.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, drawing on a unique data set, the authors estimate the returns to education for Canadian Aboriginal people. Second, the authors explore the relationship between occupation and the economic well-being, measured as income, of Aboriginal people in an effort to provide a better understanding of the causes of income gaps for Aboriginal people.

The data used in this study is the Public Use Microdata File of Aboriginal People’s Survey, 2012. An ordered logit model is used to estimate the key determinants for income groups. Then the marginal effects of each variable, for the probability of being in each category of the outcomes, are derived.

All the explanatory variables, including demographic, educational and occupational variables, appeared statistically significant with predicted signs. These results confirmed relationships between income level and education and occupations.

The data limitation of income, as a categorical variable prevents the precise estimation of the contributions of the dependent variables in dollar amount.

In order to substantially improve the Aboriginal people’s market performance, it is important to emphasise the quality of their education and whether their areas of study could lead them to high-skilled occupations.

Attention is paid to the types of human capital rather than the general term of education.