The impact of work on morbidityrelated early reti

Authors: Wolfgang Boedeker Heiko Friedel Michael Friedrichs Christof Röttger

Publish Date: 2007/08/04

Volume: 16, Issue: 2, Pages: 97-105

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Abstract

Occupational histories of 28000 persons who were granted a disability pension in 1999 and of some 260000 employed persons serving as controls were recorded After developing suitable methods to map occupational histories to exposures odds ratios and attributable risks of early retirement were calculated in a casecontrol study The direct costs of early retirement taken as the utilization of medical resources were calculated from statistics of the German Health Insurance System The indirect costs were calculated by estimating the loss of productivity resulting from early retirement The total of the direct and indirect costs multiplied with the population attributable risk yields the desired workrelated costs of early retirementIn Germany the workrelated costs of early retirement are estimated as at least 103 billion Euros annually including 12 billion Euros direct costs The most important exposures are heavy work lifting and low job control It is estimated that a moderate increase in job control could save up to 2 billion Euros annually The strongest associations to disability pensioning could be seen for occupations in nursing and miningThis study shows a considerable impact of work on early retirement This impact is seen with respect to increased risks for a number of occupations and workload factors The results point to the importance of worksite health promotion and prevention as there seems to be a considerable potential not only for reducing the individual burden of early retirement but also for high economic savings

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