Racial disparities among older adults in diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and mortality
have widened, in part due to economic recessions such as the Great Recession (2008-2009).
The Great Recession disproportionately worsened employment disruptions including precarious
employment, health, and survival for Black relative to White workers. Population health research
on employment-related health consequences of the Great Recession however do not address
vulnerability of prior exposure to precarious employment, leaving a knowledge gap regarding the
extent to which precarity during an economic recession maybe superimposed on prior work
precarity. This cumulative precarity could exacerbate health disparities for older workers.
Economic recessions also deteriorate psychosocial working conditions among those who remain
employed. It, however, remains unclear how psychosocial work conditions such as job strain
during an economic recession, influence health and mortality when they occur together with
cumulative precarity. The objective of this project, therefore, is to assess how pre-recession and
successive Great Recession precarity cumulatively shaped employment and work conditions for
older Black and White workers, and along with psychosocial working conditions impacted health
biomarker trajectories and mortality. I will use 2006-2018 data from the 1) Health and Retirement
Study (HRS) and 2) HRS- linked Occupational Information Network Data (O*NET) data to
examine the following 3 specific aims: 1) Examine Black-White differences in the independent
and co-occurring effects of pre-recession (2006) and Great Recession (2008-2010) precarity on
trajectories (2012-2018) of diabetes and CVD biomarkers (hbA1c, cholesterol, C-reactive protein,
and systolic blood pressure) and all-cause mortality, 2) Among those who remain employed during
the Great Recession, examine Black-White differences in the association of psychosocial work
conditions (job strain) with trajectories of diabetes and CVD biomarkers and all-cause mortality,
while accounting for cumulative precarity, and 3) Examine whether gender moderates
associations observed in Aims 1 and 2. This project is timely, and provides an opportunity to
explore and understand these issues as the remnants of the COVID-19 economic recession
persist, with additional and disproportionate insults on both employment and health in Blacks, the
full extent of which will not be fully elucidated for years to come. An understanding of these
associations is important to inform appropriate policies aimed at building social and health safety
nets for older workers approaching and preparing for retirement.
