Work-health relationships in middle-aged and elderly residents of a Jerusalem community

Work-health relationships were examined cross-sectionally in 1886 men and women aged ⩾50 years in Jerusalem in 1985–1987, in the third round of a multipurpose longitudinal community health study. The main occupational variables were employment status, reasons for not working, and satisfaction with work. Sex and age were controlled in all comparisons. Workers were clearly healthier than nonworkers with respect to general, physical and emotional health, and people who had given up work were less healthy than those still working, whether they had stopped for health reasons, only because of their age, or only for extrinsic reasons (retrenchment or dismissal). Workers who expressed satisfaction with their work were healthier than others, the odds ratio in favour of good general health being 2.4 at 50–64 and 2.5 at ⩾65 years of age. The associations between job satisfaction and health remained apparent when education and origin were controlled. Multivariate analyses suggested that the associations were not spurious ones attributable to proneness to report both dissatisfaction and ill-health. Job dissatisfaction was not significantly associated with angina pectoris, possible myocardial infraction, or hypertension. Taken at their face value, the findings support the impact of job satisfaction or its determinants on the health of middle-aged and elderly men and women. The associations will be re-appraised in the longitudinal analysis of the study data.