ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2013
Higher-status occupations and breast cancer: a life-course stress approach.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association between allostatic load and risk of breast carcinoma in situ in the UK biobank.Cancer causes & control : CCC · 2026Article
- Examining the relationship between contemporary job typologies and dimensions of health at the intersection of race and gender.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Influence of occupational stress on breast cancer incidence in the Women's Health Initiative.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2025Observational
- Article
- Employment Resources and the Physical and Mental Health of Mothers of Young Children.Journal of family issues · 2024Article
- Phenotype Discovery and Geographic Disparities of Late-Stage Breast Cancer Diagnosis across U.S. Counties: A Machine Learning Approach.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2022Article
- Independent risk factors for axillary lymph node metastasis in breast cancer patients with one or two positive sentinel lymph nodes.BMC women's health · 2020Article
- Occupational Class Differences in Long-Term Sickness Absence Due to Breast Cancer during 2005-2013: A Population-Based Study among Finnish Women.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
- The effect of prescribed exercise volume on biomarkers of chronic stress in postmenopausal women: Results from the Breast Cancer and Exercise Trial in Alberta (BETA).Preventive medicine reports · 2019Article
- Blue-collar work and women's health: A systematic review of the evidence from 1990 to 2015.SSM - population health · 2018Article
- Occupational inequalities in female cancer incidence in Japan: Hospital-based matched case-control study with occupational class.SSM - population health · 2018Article
- Female white-collar workers remain at higher risk of breast cancer after adjustments for individual risk factors related to reproduction and lifestyle.Occupational and environmental medicine · 2017Article
- Perceived Workplace Stress Is Associated with an Increased Risk of Prostate Cancer before Age 65.Frontiers in oncology · 2017Article
- The impacts of public mammography screening on the relationship between socioeconomic status and cancer stage.SSM - population health · 2016Article
- Effects of Minority Status and Perceived Discrimination on Mental Health.Population research and policy review · 2016Article
- Early-Life Socioeconomic Status and Mortality at Three Life Course Stages: An Increasing Within-Cohort Inequality.Journal of health and social behavior · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Using the 1957-2011 data from 3682 White non-Hispanic women (297 incident breast cancer cases) in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, United States, we explore the effect of occupation in 1975 (at age 36) on breast cancer incidence up to age 72. Our study is motivated by the paradoxical association between higher-status occupations and elevated breast cancer risk, which presents a challenge to the consistent health advantage of higher social class. We found that women in professional occupations had 72122% and women in managerial occupations had 57-89% higher risk of a breast cancer diagnosis than housewives and women in lower-status occupations. We explored an estrogen-related pathway (reproductive history, health behaviors, and life-course estrogen cycle) as well as a social stress pathway (occupational experiences) as potential explanations for the effect of higher-status occupations. The elevated risk of breast cancer among professional women was partly explained by estrogen-related variables but remained large and statistically significant. The association between managerial occupations and breast cancer incidence was fully explained by job authority defined as control over others' work. Exercising job authority was related to higher breast cancer risk (HR = 1.57, 95% CI: 1.12, 2.18), especially with longer duration of holding the professional/managerial job. We suggest that the assertion of job authority by women in the 1970s involved stressful interpersonal experiences that may have promoted breast cancer development via prolonged dysregulation of the glucocorticoid system and exposure of the breast tissue to adverse effects of chronically elevated cortisol. Our study emphasizes complex biosocial pathways through which women's gendered occupational experiences become embodied and drive forward physiological repercussions.
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