Hypertension risk appears higher for low-wage workers

Earning low wages is a risk factor for hypertension, especially in women and younger workers, according to data in the European Journal of Public Health.

The link between lower socioeconomic status and hypertension was previously established. This study was the first to focus specifically on the association between wages and hypertension, researchers said.

The study included longitudinal, nationally representative US data from four time periods (1999, 2001, 2003 and 2005) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The sample was limited to 17,295 employed participants aged 25 to 65 years. Subsamples were constructed based on two age groups: 25 to 44 years and 45 to 65 years. Hypertension was self-reported based on physician diagnosis.The researchers found significant correlations between wages and hypertension in both logistic and Cox regressions, most notably for women and those aged 25 to 44 years.

When obesity, subjective measures of health and number of comorbidities were excluded from logistic and Cox regressions, the correlation was stronger.

Doubling a worker’s wage reduced the risk for hypertension diagnosis by 16%, according to logistic regression. Doubling the wage reduced risk by 1.2% over 2 years and 0.6% over 1 year.

“[These data suggest] that if there were 110 million persons employed in the United States between the ages of 25 and 65 per year during the entire timeframe of the study — from 1999 until 2005 — then a 10% increase in everyone’s wages would have resulted in 132,000 fewer cases of hypertension each year,” J. Paul Leigh, MD, of the division of epidemiology, department of public health sciences and Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, University of California Davis School of Medicine, said in a press release.

Additional analyses by demographics, including age, sex, race and comorbidities, demonstrated that female sex and younger age (25 to 44 years) were the strongest predictors of hypertension. In these analyses, doubling the wages of younger workers was associated with a 25% to 30% decrease in risk for hypertension diagnosis and doubling the wages of women was associated with a 30% to 35% decrease in risk, according to the press release.

Leigh recommended additional research using different national data sets to study the potential relationship between low wages and hypertension.

“If the outcomes are the same, we could have identified a way to help reduce the costs and personal impact of a major health crisis,” Leigh said in the release.

For more information:

Leigh JP. Eur JPublic Health. 2012;22:854-859.

Disclosure:The study was partially funded by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.