The relationship between occupation and health.

The impact of occupation on health is getting growing interest in the field of Health Economics. Occupation is one factor of socioeconomic status, which may influence health. Other socioeconomic characteristic which do have an impact on health are education and income. The number of years of education and higher income do have a positive impact on health. Occupation is also discussed as a social determinant of health, although it has received little attention in economic research. The thesis studies the impact of manual occupation health, compared to non-manual occupation in the United Kingdom. The data set consist of 3,347 observations from The British Household Panel Study (BHPS). The panel study makes it possible to examine health deterioration over the period 1991 and 2009. An ordinal logistic regression is used to study the impact of manual occupation on health, controlling for initial health and several socioeconomic characteristics as education and income. The results suggest that manual occupation has a significant negative impact on health.