12. An emerging social science framework integrates labor market conditions, employment experiences and health.

A recent article by Amick and Lavis on work and health provides a framework for integrating labor market conditions, workplace conditions and benefits, and health.⁵⁵ Significantly, the framework assumes ongoing, reciprocal relationships between work and health and points to the importance of longitudinal information to assess the interactive nature of these domains over the course of time. It allows for different levels of information about work — including regional and local economic conditions and specific job-related conditions such as degree of autonomy — as well as different aspects of health conditions. This framework makes a significant contribution to the research because it integrates the disciplines of economics and health to demonstrate their interplay; provides a context for the myriad discrete relationships that comprise the work and health literature; generates hypotheses across disciplines; and invites a variety of methodological approaches to specifying these relationships. Barnett creates a similar model for reciprocal influences between work and family.⁵⁶