The association between work environment in early adulthood and self-rated health at age 32: a prospective cohort study

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the association between perceived physical and psychosocial work environment in early adulthood (ages 21 and 28) and self-rated health at age 32. Methods: This study was based on data from the Vestliv cohort, a longitudinal study following individuals born in 1989 who were residents of Ringkøbing County in 2004. The study included questionnaire data from 556 working participants from 2010 and 794 from 2017. Results: Low trust at work, measured at age 21, was associated with poor self-rated health at age 32 in both adjusted and unadjusted analyses. Several work environment variables showed strong associations with poor self-rated health at age 32 in crude and partially adjusted models. Conclusion: The study found that low trust at age 21 was statistically significantly associated with poor self-rated health at age 32.