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Mortality of a municipal worker cohort: II. Females
Author(s) -
Vena John E.,
Cookfair Diane L.,
Fiedler Roger C.,
Barnes Robert E.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
american journal of industrial medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.7
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1097-0274
pISSN - 0271-3586
DOI - 10.1002/ajim.4700090207
Subject(s) - medicine , cohort , demography , retrospective cohort study , cohort study , occupational medicine , epidemiology , gerontology , occupational exposure , environmental health , surgery , sociology
Women have become an increasingly important segment of the total work force, yet there are very few published occupational mortality studies of female workers. This paper reports the findings of a retrospective cohort mortality study of 1,371 full‐time female municipal employees of the City of Buffalo, New York, who were employed at least 1 day between January 1, 1950, and October 1, 1979, and who worked a minimum of 5 years. Vital status was ascertained for 88% of the female cohort, resulting in the identification of 214 observed deaths. This predominantly white‐collar, service‐oriented female cohort demonstrated significantly lower mortality than that expected based on U.S. mortality rates for white females. This strong “healthy‐worker effect” was consistent across the time period of the study, across cause‐specific mortality especially for all malignant neoplasms and all diseases of the circulatory system, and across different worker groups. Findings are discussed in light of the methodological issues involved in occupational studies of female workers.