The prevalence of the “painfully thin” among the unemployed – new study reveals many jobless medically underweight

A new study of the unemployed, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, has found they have a substantially increased risk of being medically underweight, compared to similar people who had not recently been unemployed. The difference was more pronounced for longer term jobseekers, men and people from lower-income households.

The research, by Dr Amanda Hughes and Professor Meena Kumari at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, followed the health and work circumstances of over 10,000 work-age adults in the UK’s largest household panel study, Understanding Society, interviewed annually between 2009 and 2013. The research compared Body Mass Index (BMI) at the end of the study period between people who were currently unemployed, people who had recently been unemployed, and people who had not recently been unemployed.

The results will be of significant interest to policy makers and health practitioners looking at the national trend towards obesity, but also shed new insight on the established link between long term unemployment and an increased risk of chronic illness or dying. The research suggests being underweight could play a previously overlooked role.

Key findings

• Jobseekers were more likely to be underweight than the never-unemployed

• Jobseekers were less likely to be overweight than the never-unemployed

• Non-smoking jobseekers were more, but smoking jobseekers less likely to be obese

• Longer-term jobseekers, unemployed men, and the unemployed from less affluent backgrounds were most at risk of being underweight

Dr Amanda Hughes said:

“There are real health risks in being underweight or obese, and this may help explain the high rates of chronic disease and mortality among jobseekers. The results were surprising because it is often assumed that long-term unemployed people are heavier than people in work, for example because it is harder to eat healthily on a very restricted income. Our results suggest that, while there is more obesity among non-smoking jobseekers, unemployed people are also at substantially increased risk of being medically underweight. This research will be important to policy makers because for both obesity and underweight we identify particular groups – non-smokers for obesity, men and those from poorer backgrounds for underweight – for whom the risk is especially stark.”

The research, by Dr Amanda Hughes and Professor Meena Kumari at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, is published in the April edition of the journal Preventive Medicine and available online now at:
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2016.12.045

All media enquiries lcullen@essex.ac.uk

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