Disentangling the indirect links between socioeconomic status and health: The dynamic roles of work stressors and personal control.

2009/01/01 by Amy M. Christie, Julian Barling · 97 citations
Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Clinical psychology #Control (management) #Developmental psychology #Employment and Welfare Studies #Environmental health #Feeling #Health disparities and outcomes #Medicine #Perspective (graphical) #Population #Psychiatry #Psychology #Psychosocial #Sense of control #Social psychology #Socioeconomic status #Stressor #Structural equation modeling #Workplace Health and Well-being

paper · doi:10.1037/a0016847

published in Journal of Applied Psychology 94(6), 1466-1478 (American Psychological Association)

openalex publication_date 2009/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26

Abstract

Prior research has documented an indirect link between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, and the goal in this study was to help unravel this phenomenon from a dynamic perspective. The authors hypothesized that SES would be positively related to feelings of personal control and negatively related to perceived work stressors. Drawing on dynamic conceptualizations of these psychosocial factors, they suggest that these psychosocial factors relate to one another over time. Individuals who have higher levels of personal control experience increasingly fewer work stressors over time than do those with lower levels of personal control, and those who experience greater work stressors increasingly perceive less personal control over time than do those with fewer work stressors. Finally, the authors argue that trajectories of personal control and work stressors are associated with the accumulation of health problems over the same period. Their model was tested with 3-wave data (over 4 years) from a nationally representative sample of Canadian employees (N = 3,419). Latent curve modeling provides support for the proposed dynamic model. Conceptual and practical implications are drawn, and suggestions for future research are outlined.

Citations

• Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude, and Mental Strain: Implications for Job Redesign

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