Association between alcohol, socioeconomic position and labour market participation: A prospective cohort study of transitions between work and unemployment

Abstract

Aims: This study aimed to test the hypothesis that heavy alcohol consumption and problem drinking is associated with a higher risk of becoming unemployed and a lower chance of entering the job market across socioeconomic positions. Methods: A sample of 84,474 men and women aged 18–60 years from the Danish National Health Survey 2010 participated in the study. Information on alcohol consumption and problem drinking was obtained by questionnaire. The primary outcomes were becoming unemployed and entering the job market. The follow-up period was five years. Information on labour market transitions and socioeconomic position (educational level) was obtained through nationwide registers. Multiplicative analyses were performed. Results: Heavy alcohol consumption and problem drinking were associated with a higher risk of unemployment among low-educated (hazard ratio (HR)=1.5; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.3–1.9) and medium-educated (HR=1.3; 95% CI 1.1–1.5) individuals in comparison to individuals with a similar educational level drinking one to seven drinks per week. Excessive alcohol consumption and problem drinking were associated with a lower chance of entering the job market for individuals with a medium or high level of education: medium-educated individuals drinking >28 drinks per week had a HR of 0.82 (95% CI 0.69–0.98) when compared to medium-educated individuals drinking one to seven drinks per week. The corresponding HR among high-educated individuals was 0.71 (95% CI 0.49–1.0). Conclusions: Heavy alcohol consumption and problem drinking are associated with a higher risk of unemployment in some social strata, whereas excessive alcohol consumption and problem drinking are associated with a lower chance of entering the job market in other social strata.

Oral health promotion and labour market prospects of socially disadvantaged and unemployed people – a randomised controlled trial

“…As a limitation, we did not have the opportunity to include all determinants that might influence labour market prospects. For example, some studies suggest that alcohol abuse affects employment outcomes [31,32]. The inclusion of this information could have led to more precise estimates of the true effect sizes.…”

Association of low mechano‐energetic efficiency and prognosis in liver cirrhosis

“…One of the strengths of this study is that it was performed on a large population of liver cirrhosis patients in a public Danish hospital with a large intake of patients with gastrointestinal disease—health care in Denmark is entirely tax financed (Schmidt et al, 2019), and as increased alcohol consumption is associated with poor socioeconomic status (Allen et al, 2018; Egan et al, 2021; Keyes & Hasin, 2008) this health care structure presumably reduces selection bias compared with countries where health care relies on user payment. Furthermore, investigation in this study was a part of a standard diagnostic workup and was thus performed on the majority of patients with liver cirrhosis.…”

“…One of the strengths of this study is that it was performed on a large population of liver cirrhosis patients in a public Danish hospital with a large intake of patients with gastrointestinal disease-health care in Denmark is entirely tax financed (Schmidt et al, 2019), and as increased alcohol consumption is associated with poor socioeconomic status (Allen et al, 2018;Egan et al, 2021;Keyes & Hasin, 2008) A significantly poorer survival is seen in patients with low MEE. MEE, mechano-energetic efficiency.…”

35 Years of health surveys in Denmark: a backbone of public health practice and research

“…In this respect, the major strengths are the large number of respondents, the setting in a general population, the diversity of questionnaire content and the possibility of linkage to administrative registers at the individual level. Examples of use include, among other things, research projects on social inequality, chronic disease and multimorbidity, body mass index, alcohol, smoking, cancer survivors, mental health and stress, and physical activity [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In total, over 200 research projects have been conducted based on data from the DNHS.…”