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1 – 10 of 35This study examined changes in work precarity (i.e., job insecurity and income insecurity) and involuntary job loss following the start of the Great Recession in 2007 among people…
Abstract
This study examined changes in work precarity (i.e., job insecurity and income insecurity) and involuntary job loss following the start of the Great Recession in 2007 among people with and without disabilities. Using five waves of nationally representative data from the Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) panel study, the findings demonstrated that people with disabilities who had early experiences of income insecurity were more likely to experience later income insecurity than people without disabilities. Those who had a functional disability and experienced job insecurity and income insecurity at W1, in 1986, were also significantly more likely to experience involuntary job loss following the start of the Great Recession. These findings highlight the disproportionate impact of early work precarity for people with disabilities and are discussed as an application of the life-course concept of cumulative disadvantage.
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Gabriele Ciciurkaite and Robyn Lewis Brown
Food insecurity and hunger are found to have important adverse mental health effects, and have been of particular interest to epidemiologists and public health scholars. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Food insecurity and hunger are found to have important adverse mental health effects, and have been of particular interest to epidemiologists and public health scholars. The primary goal of the present study is to expand our understanding of the mental health effects of food insecurity by assessing gender-based disparities among a nationally-representative sample of U.S. adults.
Methodology/approach
Using data from the combined 2011-2012 and 2013-2014 cycles of The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (N=11,539), we estimated multiple ordinary least squares and binomial models using adult food insecurity measures and self-reported gender as main predictors of depressive symptoms and alcohol use.
Findings
Our results demonstrate that food insecurity is associated with depressive symptoms but not alcohol consumption. Additionally, we found an association between food insecurity and increased psychological distress among women relative to men. In contrast, no evidence of a difference in the association between food insecurity and alcohol use was observed across the two genders, indicating that experiences of food insecurity are particularly salient for psychological health among women.
Implications and originality
These findings add to the growing literature that household food insecurity has serious mental health consequences, and extend this work by clarifying ways in which gender accounts for differences in the association between food insecurity and psychological and behavioral outcomes.
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Robyn Lewis Brown, Mairead Eastin Moloney and Gabriele Ciciurkaite
Motivated by research linking job autonomy and job creativity with psychological well-being, this study examines how these work characteristics influence well-being among people…
Abstract
Objective
Motivated by research linking job autonomy and job creativity with psychological well-being, this study examines how these work characteristics influence well-being among people with and without physical disabilities, utilizing both a categorical and continuous measure of disability.
Method
Data were drawn from two waves of a community study in Miami-Dade County, Florida, of 1,473 respondents. Structural equation modeling was used to assess whether job autonomy and job creativity mediate the associations between the indicators of physical disability considered and depressive symptoms and whether these associations varied by gender.
Results
Controlling for the effects of the sociodemographic control variables, both job autonomy and job creativity significantly influence the association between physical disability and depressive symptoms regardless of the measure of disability used. The effects of job autonomy were significantly greater for women than men in the context of greater functional limitation.
Conclusions
The findings highlight the need to further consider the work characteristics of employed people with disabilities. They also demonstrate that the conceptualization and measurement of physical disability has important research implications.
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Heather E. Dillaway, Carrie L. Shandra, Kiera Chan and Alexis A. Bender
Matthew E. Archibald, Rachel N. Head, Jordan Yakoby and Pamela Behrman
This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.
Methodology/Approach
Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.
Findings
Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.
Research Limitations
Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).
Originality/Value
This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.
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