Levelling Up goals should be assessed through self-reported health measures

Links between an area's health and employment figures are stronger when looking at self-rated health measures, compared with life expectancy or mortality indicators, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The research, published in BMC Public Health, sought to evaluate which health indicator is most closely linked to labour market outcomes, such as not being in paid work, working hours (i.e. full-time or part-time) and economic inactivity (i.e. being unemployed, retired, sick or disabled). Researchers also wanted to assess whether the associations are restricted to those over the age of 50. The team used a representative sample of English and Welsh census data of 430,377 adults aged 16-74 from 2011 to analyse which measures of health-in-a-place were also associated with employment outcomes. To do so, the researchers assessed seven criteria from local authority census and vital records data, including self-rated health (at 50-74 years), long-term illness (at 50-74 years), age-specific mortality rate (at 50-74 years), avoidable mortality, life expectancy (at birth and 65 years), disability-free life expectancy (at 50 years), and healthy life expectancy (at 50 years).