Content №4 от 2025
Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Unemployment and Self-Reported Health (2015-2024)
The purpose of this work is to assess the overall effect of the mutual influence of the “unemployed" status on self-assessed health by meta-analysis based on the analysis of foreign literature from 2015 to 2024. Meta-analysis is a universal quantitative method for combining data from individual articles and calculating the overall effect. For the first time in the Russian literature, it is used to analyze the relationship between the labor market and health.
Based on the formulated search strategy, a database search was conducted. Screening based on the title and abstract and using keywords reduced the sample to 124 articles, as a result, 12 publications and 35 models presented in them were selected for quantitative analysis. Regression with random effects estimated the overall effect of the relationship between the status of “unemployed" and self-assessed health at OR = 1.76; this indicator was statistically significant. To reduce the heterogeneity of the model, a subgroup analysis was used, which confirmed that unemployment has a more negative impact on men and on Western Europeans. The calculation of the meta-regression showed that financial difficulties and deprivation increase the negative relationship between health and status in the labor market, and controlling the model for the age of the respondent reduces the negative effect of job absence.
The study confirmed the existence of a possible publication bias, so the results of the work should be interpreted with caution. The obtained estimates will be used by the authors for comparison with the results for Russia, calculated using quasi-experimental approaches and based on models that account for the endogeneity between self-assessed health and labor market status. The comparison is a starting point for the formulation of employment strategies, taking into consideration the population health.
