A shift in women's health? Older workers' self-reported health and employment settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The first wave of COVID-19 has had a massive impact on work arrangements settings in many European countries with potential effects on health that are likely to vary across gender.

Methods: Focusing on the workforce aged 50 and over in 27 European countries using data from SHARE wave 8 (N = 11,221), the study applies a generalized logit mixed-effects model to assess the relationship between negative and positive change in self-reported health since the start of the pandemic and change in employment settings using an interaction effect between gender and employment arrangements to distinguish their specific association by gender after controlling for socio-economic covariates and multicollinearity.

Results: Female respondents have higher probabilities to declare a positive health when working fully or partially from home or when temporarily and permanently unemployed.