Health status and urban labour markets: estimating working conditions and their effects on health in Mexican urban areas, 1998-2010

One the very first concerns social scientist had about population and development is perhaps the conditions workers had to endure in order to make the economic system develop. In that regard, the work of Engels “the condition of the working class in England in 1844” focused on arguing that deprived labour implied poor health. In addition, the works of Charles Booth and Sebohm Rowntree also showed that labour and access to health are important factors of poverty. This research aims at contributing to the general hypothesis that conditions of labour determine health status and that in turn these two factors shape poverty in urban areas. In order to achieve this goal, we make use of fifty two quarters of the Urban Employment National Survey, each containing about 300 thousand observations. In addition, information of causes of death from administrative records is added. With these two main sources of data we construct a panel for econometric testing. Making use of a number of definitions that capture a broader range of working conditions, where formal-informal job is the main axis of analysis we expect to find correlation between more informal precarious activities and more stress related illnesses or causes of death.