The Commission for Healthier Working Lives

Date:

25 11 2024

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For too long, our working-age health challenge has been overlooked. Our health is an asset that needs investing in: being unable to work, or having to work and earn less, can affect our health and worsen inequalities.

The impact of poor working-age health on public finances cannot be ignored either, with reduced government revenues and increased welfare spend. Successive governments have failed to introduce policies needed to maintain working-age health and boost participation in the workforce. We need a long-term plan.

Learning and Work Institute (L&W), Institute for Employment Studies (IES) and Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) worked in partnership for the Commission for Healthier Working Lives, supported by the Health Foundation. Drawing on the existing evidence and through tailored individual projects across six themes, we identified key gaps and undertook research to explore in more depth:

  1. The extent and drivers of poor working age population health
  2. Implications of health trends for labour supply and the wider economy
  3. How changes to the type of work people do interacts with health

Our findings informed the Commission with the best available evidence to understand the complex relationships between work and health, existing market and policy failures, and to identify fresh approaches and interventions required to address them.

Read the Commission's final recommendations