Promotion good for the pocket but bad for the health

Apr 13 2009

British researchers have discovered that a job promotion might be good for the pocket but could be bad for the health.

According to economics and psychology researchers at the University of Warwick, promotion on average produces 10% more mental strain and gives up to 20% less time to visit the doctor.

Professor Andrew Oswald and Chris Boyce, in a study "Do People Become Healthier after Being Promoted", have revealed that promotion offers few benefits when it came to physical health.

The researchers questioned the assumption that people with better job status appeared to benefit from an improvement in health as a result of an increased sense of life control and self-worth.

The researchers used data from the British Household Panel Survey gathered annually between 1991 and 2005, which gave information on approximately 1000 individual promotions and they found no evidence of improved physical health after promotion - nor that self-assessed feelings of health declined. But they did find evidence of significantly greater mental strain - after a job promotion, there was on average a 10% decrease in people's mental health measured in a standardized way across the British population.

Also interesting was that those who had been promoted at work also reported on average a 20% fall in their visits to a doctor following their promotion.

While at first glance this drop in doctor visits does not match the lack of change in the reported health of promoted individuals, the increased stress levels of promoted workers may be due in part to more constraints on their time and they simply have less time to visit a doctor.

Researcher Chris Boyce says a promotion at work is not as great as many people think as the evidence shows that the mental health of managers often deteriorates after a job promotion - beyond a mere short-term change.

Boyce says there are no indications of any health improvements for promoted people other than reduced attendance at GP surgeries, which may itself be something to worry about rather than celebrate.

The research is due to be presented at the Royal Economic Society's conference later this month.