Affiliations: Department of Business Administration and Social
Sciences, Division of Business Administration and Management, Luleå
University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden | Section of Personal Injury Prevention, Department of
Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden | Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska
Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Sofia Reinholdt, Division of
Business Administration and Management, Luleå University of Technology,
SE-971 89 Luleå, Sweden. Tel.: +46 920 49 13 61; E-mail: Sofia.Reinholdt@ltu.se
Abstract: Studies emphasizing the disability pension (DP) process are rare. Objective: To identify similarities and differences in work and health
between persons who, prior to DP changed jobs due to health-reasons
(health-selectors) to other disability pensioners. Participants: a retrospective cohort study was performed on a random sample of all individuals
in three counties of Sweden who, in 1998, were under the age of 65 and had been
granted DP. Methods: A questionnaire was administered in 2000 (n=917, response rate 52%). The responses and register data on
sickness absence in 1990--1998 and DP diagnoses were analysed. Results: The health-selection group had lower self-perceived health; more partial
sick-leave days during the eight years preceding DP, and DP diagnoses were more
often musculoskeletal and psychiatric disorders, than the other disability
pensioners. The groups did not differ regarding occupational affiliation before
the last job. For subjects in the health-selection group, the job change did
more often not involve a change of employer, and more had switched to jobs
entailing less physical strain, particularly customer service work. Work
history did not differ between the groups regarding the average level of
physical work demands during the work career, however, disparities were found
in the distribution of demands. Conclusions: The findings pinpoint the importance of studying disability pensioning as a process over time in order to
identify and elucidate how exposure and selection interact and contribute to
early exclusion from the labour market.
