Employment quality and population health: Current evidence and policy implications

Across high-income countries, a growing share of the workforce holds jobs that depart from the standard employment relationship. A now-substantial body of research argues that what matters for health is not the departure itself but the quality of the arrangement: employment security, income adequacy, and access to rights and protections. This talk reviews where that evidence now stands and what follows from it for policy.

I begin with the conceptual and measurement problem — how employment quality has been operationalised, and why the shift from survey-based self-reports to linked administrative data has changed what we can credibly claim. Sweden serves as the empirical anchor: total-population register data allow employment trajectories to be followed prospectively against health outcomes while accounting for prior morbidity, which addresses the health-selection critique that has dogged this literature. In that setting, low employment quality is associated with common mental disorders, substance use and suicide attempt, a 24% higher stroke risk among men, and a 20% higher risk of premature mortality. That these associations persist in a coordinated labour market with high bargaining coverage is itself informative for comparative work.

The second half turns to intervention. A systematic review conducted within our programme found remarkably few evaluated initiatives, and little basis for comparison across those that exist. Against that thin evidence base, I present ten policy and practice proposals developed with the research group, and would welcome discussion of their transferability beyond the Nordic context.