Is temporary employment a cause or consequence of poor mental health? A panel data analysis

Dawson, Chris; Veliziotis, Michail; Pacheco, Gail; Webber, Don J.

Abstract

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. Mental health status has an association with labour market outcomes. If people in temporary employment have poorer mental health than those in permanent employment then it is consistent with two mutually inclusive possibilities: temporary employment generates adverse mental health effects and/or individuals with poorer mental health select into temporary from permanent employment. We apply regression analyses to longitudinal data corresponding to about 50,000 observations across 8000 individuals between 1991 and 2008 drawn from the British Household Panel Survey. We find that permanent employees who will be in temporary employment in the future have poorer mental health than those who never become temporarily employed. We also reveal that this relationship is mediated by greater job dissatisfaction. Overall, these results suggest that permanent workers with poor mental health appear to select into temporary employment thus signalling that prior cross section studies may overestimate the influence of employment type on mental health.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Apr 2, 2015
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Apr 15, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 2, 2017
• Journal: Social Science and Medicine
• Print ISSN: 0277-9536
• Electronic ISSN: 0277-9536
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 134
• Pages: 50-58
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.04.001
• Keywords: temporary employment, mental health, working and mental health, anxiety, job satisfaction
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/833461
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.04.001
• Additional Information: Additional Information : First published online 02 April 2015. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Social Science and Medicine. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Social Science an Medicine, [134, (June 2015)] DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.04.001
• Contract Date: Feb 14, 2016