%0 Journal Article %@ 1470-2738 %A Fleischmann, M %A Carr, E %A Xue, B %A Zaninotto, P %A Stansfeld, SA %A Stafford, M %A Head, J %D 2018 %F discovery:10051778 %J Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health %K chronic disease, gerontology, longitudinal studies, workplace %N 10 %P 951-957 %T Changes in autonomy, job demands and working hours after diagnosis of chronic disease: a comparison of employed and self-employed older persons using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). %U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10051778/ %V 72 %X BACKGROUND: Modifications in working conditions can accommodate changing needs of chronically ill persons. The self-employed may have more possibilities than employees to modify their working conditions. We investigate how working conditions change following diagnosis of chronic disease for employed and self-employed older persons. METHODS: We used waves 2-7 from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). We included 1389 participants aged 50-60 years who reported no chronic disease at baseline. Using fixed-effects linear regression analysis, we investigated how autonomy, physical and psychosocial job demands and working hours changed following diagnosis of chronic disease. RESULTS: For employees, on diagnosis of chronic disease autonomy marginally decreased (-0.10, 95% CI -0.20 to 0.00) and physical job demands significantly increased (0.13, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.25), whereas for the self-employed autonomy did not significantly change and physical job demands decreased on diagnosis of chronic disease (-0.36, 95% CI -0.64 to -0.07), compared with prediagnosis levels. Psychosocial job demands did not change on diagnosis of chronic disease for employees or the self-employed. Working hours did not change for employees, but dropped for self-employed (although non-significantly) by about 2.8 hours on diagnosis of chronic disease (-2.78, 95% CI -6.03 to 0.48). CONCLUSION: Improvements in working conditions after diagnosis of chronic disease were restricted to the self-employed. This could suggest that workplace adjustments are necessary after diagnosis of chronic disease, but that the self-employed are more likely to realise these. Policy seeking to extend working life should consider work(place) adjustments for chronically ill workers as a means to prevent early exit from work. %Z Copyright © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.