Disparities in work, risk and health between immigrants and native-born Spaniards Meritxell Solé a, * , Luis Diaz-Serrano b , Marisol Rodríguez a a Universitat de Barcelona, Centre de Recerca en Economia del Benestar (CREB), Spain b CREIP, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain article info Article history: Available online 2 November 2012 Keywords: Spain Health Disability Working conditions Immigration Socioeconomic inequalities abstract The probability of acquiring a permanent disability is partly determined by working and contractual conditions, particularly exposure to job risks. We postulate a model in which this impact is mediated by the choice of occupation, with a level of risk associated with it. We assume this choice is endogenous and that it depends on preferences and opportunities in the labour market, both of which may differ between immigrants and natives. To test this hypothesis we apply a bivariate probit model, in which we control for personal and firm characteristics, to data for 2006 from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives provided by the Spanish Social Security system, containing records for over a million workers. We find that risk exposure increases the probability of permanent disability e arising from any cause e by almost 5%. Temporary employment and low-skilled jobs also have a positive impact. Increases in education reduce the likelihood of disability, even after controlling for the impact of education on the choice of (lower) risk. Females have a greater probability of becoming disabled. Migrant status e with differences among regions of origin e significantly affects both disability and the probability of being employed in a high-risk occupation. In spite of immigrants’ working conditions being objectively worse, they exhibit a lower probability of becoming disabled than natives because the impact of such conditions on disability is much smaller in their case. Time elapsed since first enrolment in the Social Security system increases the probability of disability in a proportion similar to that of natives, which is consistent with the immigrant assimilation hypothesis. We finally conclude that our theoretical hypothesis that disability and risk are jointly determined is only valid for natives and not valid for immigrants, in the sense that, for them, working conditions are not a matter of choice in terms of health. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Numerous investigations have demonstrated that working conditions, and in particular exposure to the risk of work-related injury and illness, have an impact on health (Bartley, Sacker, & Clarke, 2004; Benach et al., 2004; Berger & Leigh, 1989; Llena- Nozal, Lindeboom, & Portrait, 2004; Monden, 2005; Robone, Jones, & Rice, 2010). Due to the increase of “flexible” employment and other forms of non-standard contractual conditions, a growing body of literature has emerged that shows that unstable employ- ment is associated with bad health too (Gash, Mertens, & Romeu Gordo, 2007; Rodriguez, 2002; Virtanen, Kivimaki, Elovainio, Vahtera, & Ferrie, 2003). Also, psychological factors related to lack of autonomy at work and job dissatisfaction have appeared in several studies as strong determinants of general health or specific diseases (Datta Gupta & Kristensen, 2008; Marmot, 2004; Plaisier et al., 2007). As Kerkhofs and Lindeboom (1997) stress, working conditions and the working environment affect both gradual changes in health and the occurrence of events that have a sudden impact on an individual’s health, like work-related accidents. These authors assume that health status and work history may be jointly deter- mined (that is, they may be endogenous). The idea that individuals invest in their own health has had a prominent place in the health economics literature since the publication of Grossman’s seminal work in 1972 (Grossman, 1972), and the treatment of occupational choice as an investment in health can be found, for example, in Cropper (1977). Following this line of thought, our central notion is that the relationship between working conditions and health is mediated by occupational choice in terms of risk. It is plausible to assume that * Corresponding author. Universitat de Barcelona, Dept. Política Económica i Estructura Econòmica Mundial, Diagonal, 690, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Tel.: þ34 934029000. E-mail address: meritxell.sole@ub.edu (M. Solé). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Social Science & Medicine journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed 0277-9536/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.10.022 Social Science & Medicine 76 (2013) 179e187