Worked to Death: The Relationships of Job Demands and Job Control with Mortality

Despite recent calls in the literature to examine the effects of the occupational context on physiological outcomes, such as mortality, little research has accumulated on this front. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the interactive relationship between job demands, control, and death. Drawing from the job design, stress, and epidemiology literatures, we argue that job demands will be positively related to mortality under conditions of low control, and negatively related to mortality under conditions of high control. We tested our hypothesis using a 7‐year time‐lagged design in a sample of 2,363 individuals from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Our results supported our hypothesis, with results showing that for individuals in low control jobs, high job demands are associated with a 15.4% increase in the odds of death compared to low job demands. For those in high control jobs, high job demands are associated with a 34% decrease in the odds of death compared to low job demands. Supplementary analyses revealed a similar pattern predicting body mass index in the group of surviving individuals. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice, while proposing several avenues for future research.