The Effects of First Occupation on Long Term Health Status: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

In this paper, we use a longitudinal survey that has collected information for 50 years on a large cohort of Wisconsin high
school graduates and their siblings to examine the long term impact of early occupational choice on health status. We find
evidence that beginning a career in a blue collar occupation is correlated with several measures of poor health outcomes at
ages 50–65. Since our dataset includes usually unobserved pre-labor market characteristics, including IQ and childhood health
status, we can show that controlling for these variables is important for many results and suggests a high level of selection
into occupation based on health and ability. We also provide evidence of gender differentials in the association between first
occupation and later health. Then, we replace our basic measure of occupational categories with summary measures of job characteristics
and find that employment at “bad jobs” at the beginning of an individual’s career predicts later health outcomes. Finally,
we use sibling information in the dataset to show that unmeasured family background factors explain a large share of the effects
of occupation on later health. Overall, the evidence points to limited, though heterogeneous, long term effects of health
from blue collar employment.