Socioeconomic differences in disability retirement in Finland: The contribution of ill-health, health behaviours and working conditions:

Aims: Socioeconomic differences in disability retirement are large. In this study, the main interest was to find out the contribution of diseases, self-rated health, health behaviours and working conditions to socioeconomic differences in disability retirement. Methods: The data are from the nationally-representative Health 2000 Survey to which register-based retirement data have been linked. These data include 3674 persons aged 30–62 years who were employed at baseline. Of the participants, 363 ended up in disability retirement during the follow-up period 2000–2009. Cox regression analysis was used to calculate hazard ratios and their 95% confidence intervals. Results: The risk of all-cause disability retirement was higher among manual workers (HR for men 2.44, 95% CI 1.64–3.63, women 2.33, 1.57–3.44) than upper-grade non-manual employees. Ill-health and physical working conditions contributed to the socioeconomic differences in disability retirement. The importance of physical working conditions was see...