[Unemployment and ill health--or the other way around?]

In response to a recent article in Nord Med (No 11/91) this paper raises a critique of the reanalysis of two Nordic studies on the effects of unemployment on health: The model based on varying relationships between vocational ability and job requirement does not invalidate earlier findings. However, the interpretation of measurements of health in individual based follow-up studies warrants a discussion, as well as the external validity of their findings. Unemployment has been shown to affect health related behaviour, like consultation rates, referrals, sick leave and disability pension, in well controlled studies. These effects are of importance to the individuals and the health- and social services, regardless of their relation to disease in a biomedical sense.