Congratulations to CDHA graduate student Yue Qin, who was awarded a New Investigator Award for Excellence in Aging Research for her poster entitled “Labor union membership & the educational gradient in later-life health: Results from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study at the Institute on Aging’s Annual Colloquium. Qin is a PhD student in the Sociology department and her poster was based on work she completed as a student researcher for the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Her poster was based on a paper she is writing titled “Labor Union Membership and the Educational Gradient in Later-Life Health.” Qin’s study is among the first to investigate the relationship between union membership and health inequality from a life course perspective.
“Drawing on data from the 1957-2020 Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we find that labor union membership at prime working ages is associated with reduced educational gradient in later-life health. Increased access to pension plans for people with lower education contributes to this association. This research suggests that the protective effect of labor unions goes beyond supporting workers’ financial welfare to promoting public health equity in post-retirement years,” Qin shared.