R01AG066898

Effects of Job Quality in the Service Sector on Health-Related Outcomes Across the Life Course - Project Summary/Abstract

The U.S. service sector employs 27 million workers, 20% of the U.S. workforce. Abetted by new technologies, employers in the service sector have embraced surveillance and sanctioning, which affect time and pace of tasks on the job. Unpredictable and constrained scheduling practices affect the organization of time on and off work. Automation shapes longer-term expectations for the future and job insecurity. We refer to these working conditions, collectively, as temporal dimensions of job quality to draw a contrast with purely economic dimensions of job quality.

Although prior research has established a robust relationship between other aspects of job conditions and health, there is a gap in knowledge about how these new and increasingly prevalent workplace practices affect worker health and healthy aging. One important reason for this gap is a lack of suitable existing data containing information on both these emergent workplace practices and workers’ health outcomes, yet policymakers have already begun to take action to regulate these practices. There is thus a critical need to collect new data that will allow researchers to estimate the health effects of exposure to these temporal dimensions of job quality for workers across the life course.

The proposed research expands upon an innovative method for collecting survey data at scale, at low-cost, and with speed from a target population of service-sector workers. We use the Facebook advertising platform to purchase and place survey recruitment advertisements in the mobile and desktop newsfeeds of Facebook and Instagram users, targeting those who work in retail and fast food. This approach allows us to target users with particular employers and/or in specific localities. We propose to collect repeated cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data from 90,000 workers across the country.

The proposed research uses these data and methods to accomplish three aims. First, we estimate the relationship between emergent temporal dimensions of job quality and worker health and healthy aging. The data collection is designed to capitalize on natural experiments to provide rigorous evidence on the health effects of temporally precarious work. One set of analyses will exploit city and company policy changes to use rigorous difference-in-differences and instrumental variable methods to estimate causal effects of job quality on health.

Second, we assess whether the health consequences of surveillance and sanctioning, schedule unpredictability and constraint, and automation vary across the life course. Finally, we will assess the social and public supports that may buffer and mitigate the harmful health effects of these temporal dimensions of job quality.

In sum, we deploy an innovative data collection approach combined with rigorous estimation to take advantage of natural experiments implemented when labor laws or company practices change. The significant contributions of our project entail testing how new dimensions of job quality affect health, estimating differential vulnerabilities across the life course, and gauging the importance of protective supports and policies. Collectively, this research provides key missing evidence on health impacts of job quality.

President And Fellows Of Harvard College

TO ENCOURAGE BIOMEDICAL, SOCIAL, AND BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH AND RESEARCH TRAINING DIRECTED TOWARD GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF THE AGING PROCESS AND THE DISEASES, SPECIAL PROBLEMS, AND NEEDS OF PEOPLE AS THEY AGE. THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING HAS ESTABLISHED PROGRAMS TO PURSUE THESE GOALS. THE DIVISION OF AGING BIOLOGY EMPHASIZES UNDERSTANDING THE BASIC BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES OF AGING. THE DIVISION OF GERIATRICS AND CLINICAL GERONTOLOGY SUPPORTS RESEARCH TO IMPROVE THE ABILITIES OF HEALTH CARE PRACTITIONERS TO RESPOND TO THE DISEASES AND OTHER CLINICAL PROBLEMS OF OLDER PEOPLE. THE DIVISION OF BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL RESEARCH SUPPORTS RESEARCH THAT WILL LEAD TO GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOCIAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS THAT AFFECT BOTH THE PROCESS OF GROWING OLD AND THE PLACE OF OLDER PEOPLE IN SOCIETY. THE DIVISION OF NEUROSCIENCE FOSTERS RESEARCH CONCERNED WITH THE AGE-RELATED CHANGES IN THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AS WELL AS THE RELATED SENSORY, PERCEPTUAL, AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES ASSOCIATED WITH AGING AND HAS A SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION RESEARCH (SBIR) PROGRAM: TO EXPAND AND IMPROVE THE SBIR PROGRAM, TO INCREASE PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIALIZATION OF INNOVATIONS DERIVED FROM FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, TO INCREASE SMALL BUSINESS PARTICIPATION IN FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, AND TO FOSTER AND ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION OF SOCIALLY AND ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND WOMEN-OWNED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS IN TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION. SMALL BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER (STTR) PROGRAM: TO STIMULATE AND FOSTER SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION THROUGH COOPERATIVE RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT CARRIED OUT BETWEEN SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS, TO FOSTER TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER BETWEEN SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS, TO INCREASE PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIALIZATION OF INNOVATIONS DERIVED FROM FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, AND TO FOSTER AND ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION OF SOCIALLY AND ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND WOMEN-OWNED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS IN TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION.

93.866 - Aging Research

National Institute on Aging (NIA) [HHS - NIH]

Massachusetts United States

State-Wide

Research Project Grant (Parent R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) (PA-19-056)

Amendment Since initial award the total obligations have increased 420% from $676,294 to $3,516,218.