Union membership can reduce the odds of death, study finds

According to a new study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, the time spent in a union can lead to lower mortality rates. Specifically, for each additional year a person spends as a union member, their odds of mortality decrease by 1.5 percent. The findings highlight not only the economic benefits of union membership, but also point to the health benefits.

The researchers looked at data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which they noted is considered to be “gold standard longitudinal study of earnings and employment dynamics” in social sciences. It was ideal for the study because it specifically measured union employment. By analyzing 40 waves of this data, they found a significant association between cumulative unionization and lower mortality rates. 

In the study, researchers theorized there a few explanations for this. The first is that unions can have an influence on workplace safety conditions. Another is that is that unions usually increase economic compensation, and reduce the rate of temporary work and poverty. Finally, unions tend to provide fringe benefits such as health insurance, paid sick days, vacation days, and retirement plans. 

“In this paper we have demonstrated the protective association against mortality that a unionized career provides,” the researchers concluded. “Using high quality population representative data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we followed cohorts born between 1935 and 1965 through their careers and into middle- and older-adulthood between the years 1969 and 2019.”

In 2023, the U.S. life expectancy declined to 76.4 years, the shortest it had been in nearly two decades. Researchers of the study noted that the U.S. is facing a “severe crisis of worsening mortality,” which experts have previously said could be addressed by policy changes.