Using the Health and Retirement Study, we compare the health outcomes of older male construction workers with their counterparts in other occupations. We find that construction workers are more susceptible to musculoskeletal problems, chronic lung disease, and emotional/psychiatric disorders. Older construction workers were 1.4 times more likely to have a back problem and 1.3 times more likely to have a foot or leg problem than were other blue-collar workers. Nonsmoking older construction workers were 3.2 times more likely to have chronic lung disease than their nonsmoking blue-collar counterparts. When accounting for alcohol consumption, older construction workers were 1.7 times more likely to have been diagnosed with an emotional problem than other older blue-collar workers. The high rate of chronic lung disease is most likely related to on-the-job dust exposure, while the increased risk of emotional disorders might be due to the dynamics of the construction labor market.
Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website.
Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website.
You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link.
CDC is not responsible for Section 508 compliance (accessibility) on other federal or private website.
For more information on CDC's web notification policies, see Website Disclaimers.
CDC.gov Privacy Settings
We take your privacy seriously. You can review and change the way we collect information below.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Cookies used to make website functionality more relevant to you. These cookies perform functions like remembering presentation options or choices and, in some cases, delivery of web content that based on self-identified area of interests.
Cookies used to track the effectiveness of CDC public health campaigns through clickthrough data.
Cookies used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on CDC.gov through third party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes by these third parties.
Thank you for taking the time to confirm your preferences. If you need to go back and make any changes, you can always do so by going to our Privacy Policy page.