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Effects of Job Quality in the Service Sector on Health-Related Outcomes Across the Life Course

Award Number: R01AG066898
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 04/15/2021
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 12/31/2024

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Effects of Job Quality in the Service Sector on Health-Related Outcomes Across the Life Course - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The U.S. service sector employs 27 million workers, 20% of the U.S. workforce. Abetted by new technologies, employers in the service sector have embraced surveillance and sanctioning, which affect time and pace of tasks on the job, unpredictable and constrained scheduling practices, which affect the organization of time on and off work, and automation, which shapes longer-term expectations for the future and job insecurity. We refer to these working conditions, collectively, as temporal dimensions of job quality to draw a contrast with purely economic dimensions of job quality. Although prior research has established a robust relationship between other aspects of job conditions and health, there is a gap in knowledge about how these new and increasingly prevalent workplace practices affect worker health and healthy aging. One important reason for this gap is a lack of suitable existing data containing information on both these emergent workplace practices and workers’ health outcomes, yet policy makers have already begun to take action to regulate these practices. There is thus a critical need to collect new data that will allow researchers to estimate the health effects of exposure to these temporal dimensions of job quality for workers across the life course. The proposed research expands upon an innovative method for collecting survey data at scale, at low-cost, and with speed from a target population of service-sector workers. We use the Facebook advertising platform to purchase and place survey recruitment advertisements in the mobile and desktop newsfeeds of Facebook and Instagram users, targeting those who work in retail and fast food. This approach allows us to target users with particular employers and/or in specific localities. We propose to collect repeated cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data from 90,000 workers across the country. The proposed research uses these data and methods to accomplish three aims. First, we estimate the relationship between emergent temporal dimensions of job quality and worker health and healthy aging. The data collection is designed to capitalize on natural experiments to provide rigorous evidence on the health effects of temporally precarious work. One set of analyses will exploit city and company policy changes to use rigorous difference-in-differences and instrumental variable methods to estimate causal effects of job quality on health. Second, we assess whether the health consequences of surveillance and sanctioning, schedule unpredictability and constraint, and automation vary across the life course. Finally, we will assess the social and public supports that may buffer and mitigate the harmful health effects of these temporal dimensions of job quality. In sum, we deploy an innovative data collection approach combined with rigorous estimation to take advantage of natural experiments implemented when labor laws or company practices change. The significant contributions of our project entail testing how new dimensions of job quality affect health, estimating differential vulnerabilities across the life course, and gauging the importance of protective supports and policies. Collectively, this research provides key missing evidence on health impacts of job quality.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $588,253 )
2025	2025	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	000	5	12/10/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$588,253
2025	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	001	4	5/5/2025	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$0
														Subtotal = $588,253

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $772,983 )
2024	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	002	4	6/4/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$68,856
2024	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	001	4	1/12/2024	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$84,410
2024	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	000	4	12/19/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$619,717
														Subtotal = $772,983

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $685,898 )
2023	2023	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	000	3	1/12/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$685,898
														Subtotal = $685,898

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $702,007 )
2022	2022	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	001	2	5/3/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$70,202
2022	2022	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	000	2	1/18/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$631,805
														Subtotal = $702,007

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $714,788 )
2021	2021	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	001	1	4/19/2021	NEW	$38,494
2021	2021	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Aging Research	000	1	4/14/2021	NEW	$676,294
														Subtotal = $714,788

Grand Total All Awards = $3,463,929

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Effects of Job Quality in the Service Sector on Health-Related Outcomes Across the Life Course

Award Number: R01AG066898

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 04/15/2021

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 12/31/2024

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