ArticleOccupational and environmental medicine2017
Effect of informal employment on the relationship between psychosocial work risk factors and musculoskeletal pain in Central American workers.
Article in Occupational and environmental medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Informal employment and poor self-perceived health in Latin America and the Caribbean: a gender-based comparison between countries and welfare states in a pooled analysis of 176,786 workers.Globalization and health · 2021Pooled it
- Psychosocial Risks in Informal Employment: A Scoping Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Informal employment, population health, and welfare policies: A global empirical analysis between 2011-2021.PloS one · 2025Article
- Prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders among beach workers.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Informal employment as a fundamental determinant of mental health in Latin America and the Caribbean.Lancet (London, England) · 2023Article
- How does informal employment affect health and health equity? Emerging gaps in research from a scoping review and modified e-Delphi survey.International journal for equity in health · 2022Article
- Latin American Agricultural Workers' Job Demands and Resources and the Association With Health Behaviors at Work and Overall Health.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
introductionThe constant increase on the psychosocial demands experienced at work seems to contribute to the increase in health problems such as musculoskeletal pain (MSP). This association may be especially important in low-income and middle-income countries, where there is a large proportion of informal workers among whom there is little research. We analysed the association between psychosocial work risk factors and MSP among formal and informal workers using the First Central American Survey of Working Conditions and Health.
methodsThis is a representative sample (n=12 024) of the economically active population of the six Spanish-speaking countries of Central America. Prevalence ratios (PR) and corresponding 95% CIs from Poisson regression models were used to estimate the association between psychosocial work risk factors and the MSP.
resultsCompared with formal workers, informal workers reported higher prevalence of MPS in the body regions analysed (ie, cervicodorsal, lumbosacral, upper extremities) and higher exposure to psychosocial work risk factors. However, on the whole, the associations between the exposure to psychosocial work risk factors and the prevalence of MSP were similar for both formal and informal workers. Only the association between exposure to high demands and MSP in the upper extremities was higher (p=0.012) among formal (PR=1.69, 95% CI 1.46 to 1.96) than among informal workers (PR=1.40; 95% CI 1.30 to 1.51).
conclusionExposure to adverse levels of psychosocial work risk factors is associated with higher prevalence of MPS among both formal and informal workers. However, the role of employment informality in this association is complex and requires further examination.
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