Paper that looks at how the relation between occupational background, ill health, and economic activity has changed over the period 1973 to 2009, following an approach described in a paper published in the BMJ in 1996.
The research in the original paper was done to understand why falls in unemployment following the peaks of recessions in 1986 and 1990 were not accompanied by equal increases in employment.
It found that job loss and economic inactivity related to ill health had a social gradient, with adverse employment consequences more likely for people in lower socioeconomic groups. The aim of this paper is to assess the long term consequences of the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, and to look for early indications of the effect of the recession beginning in 2008.