Downsizing Is Bad for Your Health

Oct. 23, 2008— -- For the hundreds of millions of people living where vital resources are scarce, hazards to health are not hard to find. For those of us fortunate enough to reside in resource-rich countries, however, the greatest health hazards are subtle -- and far more telling than the usual litany of hypertension, high cholesterol and the like.

The greatest hazards to our longevity relate to the quality of our daily lives. The less frequently we can end the day with some sense of peace and satisfaction, the sooner we die. There are segments of the population that lose 5-10 years of their lives on this basis. We have a robust science that identifies these segments. Much of this science relates to our life in the workplace.

For most of us, the workplace is the setting in which much of our adult life plays out. For all of us, there are challenges and rewards, times that are gratifying and times that are not. No one escapes difficult moments, days -- or even more.

Those who find little satisfaction, who feel misused, abused or insecure, face more than an assault on their sense of worth. They face an assault on their sense of well being. And they face an assault on their longevity. None of this is trivial.

This is magnified greatly whenever employment is threatened. Loss of income stability can quickly prove malignant. For example, life expectancy in Russia dropped a decade within 10 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Even more dramatic is the health consequence of "downsizing." We have known about this since the Reagan-Thatcher era.

One lesson came from Finland. Scientists at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health had been studying the health and welfare of the workforce when Finland suffered a severe economic downturn; unemployment surged to nearly 20 percent between 1991 and 1995.

Raiso, a city in southwestern Finland, watched its tax base erode, leaving no option other than downsizing its 1,000-person municipal workforce. In anticipation of job loss, the rate of absenteeism for medically certified sick leave escalated. This was particularly the fate of higher-income, older workers. Many found their next episode of backache or some other musculoskeletal disorder to be incapacitating.