Key Points
The UIC scientists who wrote the paper defined precarious work as an accumulation of "unfavourable facets of employment," such as low wages, insecure employment contracts, irregular hours and lack of union representation...
With millions of Americans now engaging in precarious work, we need to pay closer attention to the health impacts of type of employment, " said study author Vanessa Oddo, assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the UIC College of Applied Health Sciences...
To understand the impact of precarious work on BMI, the researchers analyzed 20 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth adult cohort (1996-2016)..
They looked at seven precarious employment dimensions -- material rewards, working time arrangements, employment stability and collective organization, for example -- and identified 13 self-reported survey indicators of precarious employment..
"Policies and workplace interventions to improve employment quality warrant consideration to protect American workers and mitigate the growing burden of obesity-related chronic diseases in the United States," the authors write...
