ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1651197
This article is part of the Research TopicEnvironmental Determinants of Cardiovascular Health: Interactions with Lifestyle and Socioeconomic FactorsView all 9 articles
Precarious Work and Chronic Disease: Lessons Learned from the US National Agricultural Worker Survey (1999-2020)
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Michigan, School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, Ann Arbor, United States
- 2University of Michigan, School of Public Health, Department of Biostatistics, Ann Arbor, United States
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Background: Precarious employment and labor exploitation in farmworkers is historical and pervasive in the United States. Methods: We analyzed cross-sectional data from the National Agricultural Worker Survey (1999-2020, NAWS) among 46,910 farmworkers. A multidimensional precarious employment score (PES) was developed using work indicators and cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Analysis included: (1) Poisson regression model with LASSO for key predictor selection across three health outcomes; (2) PES construction to track employment conditions over time; and (3) subgroups analyses to assess disparities and trends in employment precarity. Results: Women showed no reduction in PES over time. Indigenous farmworkers (mean [M] = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.50 to 0.53; difference from reference [δM] = 0.07, 95% CI: 0.05 to 0.08) and those working with labor contractors (M = 0.5, 95% CI: 0.48 to 0.52; δM = 0.05, 95% CI: 0.04 to 0.07) showed a consistently higher PES, but their declines (Indigenous: change [ΔM] = -0.05, 95% CI: -0.09 to 0; labor contractors: ΔM = -0.08, 95% CI: -0.12 to -0.05) were smaller. Conclusions: Within this precarious workforce there were differences in PES and chronic disease. Biosocial data is needed to better understand the pathways of how precarious employment impacts the health of this workforce.
Keywords: Precarious employment, Chronic Disease, farmworkers, health inequalities, Health Disparities
Received: 21 Jun 2025; Accepted: 26 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Iglesias-Rios, Li, Handal and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lisbeth Iglesias-Rios, University of Michigan, School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, Ann Arbor, United States
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