Relation between job mobility during working life and health state after retirement: a cross sectional study of 627 subjects living in the Paris area.

The relation between job mobility during working life and health state after retirement was studied in a random sample of 627 retired men and women living in the Paris area who were beneficiaries of an interprofessional supplementary pension fund. State of health was evaluated by the number of health impairments that these subjects reported at the time of interview. Job mobility was defined by a dichotomic variable based on the number of different companies and branches of economic activity in which the subjects had worked. This information was obtained from the individual records supplied by the pension fund. For both sexes, a significant relation was found between the number of health impairments and job mobility: for men, the mean number of impairments was 1.7 in the high mobility group and 1.3 in the low mobility group, and for women these numbers were respectively 2.1 and 1.7. This finding seemed independent of the effects of selection and of the effects of factors such as age at the time of interview, age at retirement, previous diseases, past work accidents, and previous occupational exposures. These results suggest that a high job mobility during working life might be a risk factor for health after retirement.