April 7 was World Health Day which highlighted the need for universal health coverage. At least half the world's population do not receive the essential health services they need and 100 million are pushed into poverty by healthcare costs.

Healthier workforces are more productive but how does the working environment impact on employees’ health? What can employers and policymakers do to ensure the well-being of their workforce?

“It is well established that job insecurity, like unemployment, has causal detrimental effects on mental and physical health,” says Francis Green. “Governments should count the health cost of restrictive policies that generate unemployment and insecurity, while promoting employability through skills training. Policy should also encourage forms of employee participation and social support in workplaces.”

In relation to mental illness, Lord Richard Layard recommends that “Providing evidence-based therapies for people with a mental illness should be at the heart of public policymaking…By keeping so many people from working or from working productively, mental illness costs billions in welfare payments and lost taxes. By contrast, therapy boosts both employment and output, with gains exceeding the cost of treatment. It also produces savings in physical health care—as much as 20% of an individual’s annual costs—and improves life-satisfaction.”

Read further articles on health and well-being and the labor market:

• Health effects of job insecurity by Francis Green

• The economics of mental health by Richard Layard

• The relationship between recessions and health by Nick Drydakis

• The labor market in Poland 2000-2016 (Deutsch) by Piotr Lewandowski and Iga Magda

• The complex effects of retirement on health (Deutsch) by Andreas Kuhn

• The labor market in Belgium, 2000-2016 (Deutsch) by Vincent Bodart, Bruno Van der Linden and Muriel Dejemeppe

• One-company towns: Scale and consequences (Deutsch) by Simon Commander

• The labor market in India since the 1990s (Deutsch) by Indraneel Dasgupta and Saibal Kar

• Working in family firms (Deutsch) by Thomas Breda 

Visit the IZA World of Labor site for more concise, informative, evidence-based articles across the spectrum of labor economics.

All newly published one-pagers are also available to read and download in German. Find out more.​

• Eugenio Proto co-authored an article in The Conversation about how clever people help societies work together better.

• Jan Sauermann has co-authored an article Gender bias in teaching evaluations

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• Call for papers: IZA Workshop on the Economics of Employee Representation: International Perspectives, September 7-8. The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers analyzing (the effects of different) forms of non-union representation, and to put their findings into international comparative perspective. Submission deadline: April 30, 2018

• ILO: Polarisation(s) in Labour Markets, June 19. The Directorate for Research, Studies and Statistics (DARES) of the French Ministry of Labour and the Research Department of the International Labour Organization (ILO) are organizing an international conference on “Polarisation(s) in Labour Markets”. 

• Call for papers: IZA/CEPR Annual Symposium in Labour Economics 2018, September 20-21. The goal of the symposium is to provide a forum for high-quality work in labor economics and to bring together economists in the field from across Europe as well as key researchers from outside the region. Submission deadline: April 20, 2018

• Call for papers: IDSC of IZA Workshop: Matching Workers and Jobs Online - New Developments and Opportunities for Social Science and Practice, September 21-22. Like many forms of economic exchange, the process of matching workers to jobs has rapidly migrated online in the last two decades. Thus, understanding how online labor matching mechanisms work; how they affect economic outcomes like employment, wages, and inequality; and learning how to take advantage of the "big data" that are generated by online markets all have important implications for the future of labor. Submission deadline: May 1, 2018

• Call for papers: 3rd IZA Workshop: The Economics of Education, October 4-6. The aim of the workshop is to bring together about 30 researchers working on the economics of education, in particular on the theme “Education and the Labor Market”. Submission deadline: May 31

• Call for papers: 2nd IZA/HSE Workshop: Ten Years after the Financial Crisis - Labor Market Adjustment in Emerging and Post-Transition Economies, October 11-12. This second IZA/Higher School of Economics workshop will bring together labor economists who are working on labor market adjustment in the post-Soviet states that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union, post-transition countries of Central Europe as well as China. Submission deadline: July 15