The persisting effect of unemployment on health and social well-being in men early in working life

In our studies of the effects of unemployment in the early working life of men in a British national birth cohort we have shown elsewhere that this ex perience was part of a longer term accumulation of social and health disadv antage. This present study asks whether men's unemployment also inflicted p otential longterm damage to future socio-economic; chances and health. We t herefore constructed indicators of socio-economic circumstances and health at 33 years from factors already shown to be associated with health in late r life. For the socio-economic indicator we used a combination of income, o ccupational status and home ownership and described this as socioeconomic c apital. For the health indicator we combined scores of body mass index, lei sure time exercise, frequency of eating fresh fruit and of smoking, and des cribed this as health capital. After controlling for pre-labour market soci o-economic and health factors, prolonged unemployment is shown here to redu ce significantly both socioeconomic and health capital by age 33 years. We conclude that the experience of prolonged unemployment early in the working life of this population of young men looks likely to have a persisting eff ect on their future health and socio-economic circumstances. (C) 1999 Elsev ier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.