# The Effects of Workplace Social Status on Minority Health Disparities

> **NIH NIH R01** · OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $413,248

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Employment rank within workplaces has long been known to be correlated with a wide a range of health
outcomes, including morbidity and life expectancy. Our proposed project will extend the research on
workplace social status as a determinant of health by examining the associations between a wide range
of social status measures and health outcomes separately by race, ethnicity, and gender. We will
examine whether inequality in earnings within workplaces exacerbates the impacts of employment rank
on minority health disparities, and whether demographic homophily between workers and firm
managers is a social determinant of health. To do this we will use a novel database that links health
insurance enrollment records and medical claims to administrative earnings data for more than 1.8
million workers and 50,000 firms in Utah. Using a broad set of firms will allow us to separate the
impacts of financial resources from within-firm social status measures.
We will consider two distinct research designs to evaluate whether workplace social status has a causal
effect of health. The first will leverage quasi-experimental shocks to workplace social status caused by
firm mergers, splits, and by industry-specific international trade shocks that alter worker promotion
rates. The second will examine the health impacts of changes in social status when workers move jobs.
To account for the endogeneity of changes in social status we will construct instrumental variables
based on network statistics from the labor market. We will connect each worker to their coworkers, and
instrument for changes in social status measures with the changes of each worker’s former coworkers
who also changed jobs. We will use this design to understand the importance of job referral networks
on the segregation of labor market opportunities, which can create structural barriers to minority
workers escaping psychosocial and physical workplace hazards. Finally, we will link workers to their
adult children in the workforce to quantify the intergenerational persistence of health disparities that
operates through the workplace social status channel, and how this channel contributes to structural
racial and ethnic health disparities.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10802376
- **Project number:** 5R01MD017619-03
- **Recipient organization:** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Kurt Lavetti
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $413,248
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-07-22 → 2027-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10802376

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10802376, The Effects of Workplace Social Status on Minority Health Disparities (5R01MD017619-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10802376. Licensed CC0.

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