According to a study recently conducted, researchers found a direct link between low wages and hypertension and also found that women and young workers are the ones mostly affected.
J. Paul Leigh, senior author of the study and professor of public health sciences at UC Davisand his colleagues found that people, especially women and younger workers aged between 25 and 44 years, who earn less wages are at a higher risk of hypertension than people earning more wages.
"We were surprised that low wages were such a strong risk factor for two populations not typically associated with hypertension, which is more often linked with being older and male," said Leigh. "Our outcome shows that women and younger employees working at the lowest pay scales should be screened regularly for hypertension as well."
According to a report by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every three Americans are affected by hypertension and the country spends $90 billion each year in health-care services, medications and missed work days. The study is the first of its kind which looks at the relation between wages and hypertension. While a direct link between the two has been found, a specific reason is difficult to determine.
"By isolating a direct and fundamental aspect of work that people greatly value, we were able to shed light on the relationship between SES and circulatory health," said Leigh. "Wages are also a part of the employment environment that easily can be changed. Policymakers can raise the minimum wage, which tends to increase wages overall and could have significant public-health benefits."
The study was conducted after gathering information from a total of 5,651 household heads and their spouses for three time periods: 1999-2001, 2001-03 and 2003-05. Most of the information gathered was limited to those of working adults between 25 and 65 years of age.
"That means that if there were 110 million persons employed in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 65 per year during the entire timeframe of the study -- from 1999 until 2005 -- then a 10 percent increase in everyone's wages would have resulted in 132,000 fewer cases of hypertension each year," said Leigh.
The findings were published in the December issue of the European Journal of Public Health.
