## Measures ### Decent Work Decent work at Waves IV and V was measured using three indicators adapted from Duffy et al. (2017): (a) access to health insurance, (b) compensation, and (c) access to paid time off. Items included employer-provided health insurance (binary), earned income (continuous in Wave IV; ordinal scale in Wave V ranging from 1 = "<$5,000" to 12 = "$200,000 or more"), and paid vacation or sick leave (binary). Higher values indicate greater access to decent work characteristics. ### Health Strain Health strain was assessed based on the secondary allostatic load framework (Ganster et al., 2018), focusing on long-term physiological dysregulation. Biomarker domains included: - Cardiovascular: systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and pulse rate (PR) - Metabolic: body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, triglycerides, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) - Psychological: self-rated general health (1 = Excellent to 5 = Poor) High-risk thresholds were defined as values above the 75th percentile (80th for triglycerides and total cholesterol; 20th for HDL). Individual markers were dichotomized and summed within domain-specific indices. Higher scores reflect greater health strain. ### Depressive Symptoms Depressive symptoms were measured using four items from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), administered across both waves. Respondents rated items such as “I felt that I could not shake off the blues” on a four-point scale (0 = Rarely to 3 = Most or all of the time). Higher total scores denote more severe depressive symptomatology. ### Health-Risk Behaviors Health-risk behaviors were operationalized using the following indicators: - Smoking: calculated as the product of cigarettes smoked per day and the number of smoking days in the past month (log-transformed). - Binge drinking: number of days in the past year on which respondents engaged in heavy episodic drinking (5+ drinks for men; 4+ for women). - Illicit drug use: binary indicators of non-prescribed use of sedatives, tranquilizers, stimulants, or opioids, aggregated into a composite score. All variables were coded such that higher values reflect greater engagement in health-risk behavior. ### Survival Needs Financial strain related to basic needs was measured using four dichotomous items from Wave IV (0 = No, 1 = Yes), including inability to pay for: (a) phone service, (b) full rent or mortgage, (c) utility bills, and (d) food insecurity (e.g., concern about food running out). Responses were summed; higher scores indicate greater unmet survival needs. ### Autonomy Perceived autonomy was assessed via four items adapted from the Pearlin Mastery Scale (Pearlin & Schooler, 1978). Items (e.g., “I have little control over the things that happen to me”) were rated on a five-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly agree to 5 = Strongly disagree) and reverse-coded. Composite scores reflect higher levels of autonomy. ### Covariates Demographic covariates included: - Ethnicity: recoded as White (1) vs. Non-White (0) - Sex: male (1), female (2), based on Wave I biological sex - Age: calculated from date of birth and interview date - Marital status: coded as 0 = never married, 1 = currently or previously married Note: Data on gender identity and sexual orientation were not available in Wave I.