Long Working Hours and Job Quality in Europe: Gender and Welfare State Differences (original) (raw)
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Long working hours and health status among employees in Europe: between-country differences
Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 2013
Working moderately long working hours was associated with poor health outcomes and a gradient was found. Differing gender patterns seem to be related to differences in the breadwinner family models by country typology. Occupational health strategies and policies should consider working long hours as a potential psychosocial hazard when doing so is somehow forced or imposed due to economic vulnerability.
The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, 2021
Background: Studies on the association between long working hours and health have captured only a narrow range of outcomes (mainly cardiometabolic diseases and depression) and no outcome-wide studies on this topic are available. To achieve wider scope of potential harm, we examined long working hours as a risk factor for a wide range of disease and mortality endpoints. Methods: The data of this multicohort study were from two population cohorts from Finland (primary analysis, n=59 599) and nine cohorts (replication analysis, n=44 262) from Sweden, Denmark, and the UK, all part of the Individual-participant Meta-analysis in Working Populations (IPD-Work) consortium. Baselineassessed long working hours (55 hours per week) were compared to standard working hours (35-40 h). Outcome measures with follow-up until age 65 years were 46 diseases that required hospital treatment or continuous pharmacotherapy, all-cause, and three cause-specific mortality endpoints, ascertained via linkage to national health and mortality registers. Findings: 2747 (4¢6%) participants in the primary cohorts and 3027 (6¢8%) in the replication cohorts worked long hours. After adjustment for age, sex, and socioeconomic status, working long hours was associated with increased risk of cardiovascular death (hazard ratio 1¢68; 95% confidence interval 1¢08-2¢61 in primary analysis and 1¢52; 0¢90-2¢58 in replication analysis), infections (1¢37; 1¢13-1¢67 and 1¢45; 1¢13-1¢87), diabetes (1¢18; 1¢01-1¢38 and 1¢41; 0¢98-2¢02), injuries (1¢22; 1¢00-1¢50 and 1¢18; 0¢98-1¢18) and musculoskeletal disorders (1¢15; 1¢06-1¢26 and 1¢13; 1¢00-1¢27). Working long hours was not associated with all-cause mortality. Interpretation: Follow-up of 50 health outcomes in four European countries suggests that working long hours is associated with an elevated risk of early cardiovascular death and hospital-treated infections before age
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2009
Text wordcount 3839 in text; 250 in summary; 4 tables; 1 figure; 50 references SUMMARY Background: The objectives of this study are to identify family and job characteristics associated with long workhours, to analyse the relationship between long workhours and several health indicators and to examine whether gender differences for both objectives exist.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Research shows strong links between working time organization and workers’ health outcomes. Working time is also known to be highly gendered, with men and women working to different schedules. This article merges these two strands of research and takes a gender-based approach to investigating the relationship between temporal job quality and self-reported health in Europe. First, the sixth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) is used to establish the relationship between temporal dimensions of job quality and health and well-being outcomes for employed women and men. This is then corroborated using larger samples and more restricted measures of job quality drawn from micro-data from the 2019–2020 EU Labor Force Survey (LFS). The analyses show that good temporal job quality is positively associated with health and subjective well-being for both women and men, but this effect is significantly stronger for women, who are also at a greater risk of exposure to low control over worki...
Frontiers in Public Health, 2022
Objectives: This study examined the gender and crosscountry differences in the relationship between working hours and self-assessed health among working men and women in Europe, and further explored the moderating role of sleep disturbance in the relationship. Methods: We used cross-sectional data from the 6th European Working Condition Survey on 14,603 men and 15,486 women across 30 countries in Europe. A multivariate logistic regression was applied to evaluate the relationship between working hours, sleep disturbance, and self-assessed health. In addition, we employed a two-stage multilevel logistic regression to assess the crosscountry variations in the relationship between working hours and self-assessed health. Results: The study showed a slightly U-shaped relationship between working hours and less-than-good self-assessed health among working adults in Europe (<31 h: aOR
Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 2014
Full-and part-time work: gender and welfare-type differences in European working conditions, job satisfaction, health status, and psychosocial issues by Bartoll X, Cortès I, Artazcoz L 1. Job dissatisfaction among female part-time workers from southern Europe are explained by their poorer working conditions. However, part-time work is associated with better health outcomes for all welfare state regimes. 2. Being in part-time employment in continental and southern Europe, respectively, is associated with poorer health outcomes among men, even after controlling for working conditions. 3. Since the frequency of part-time tends to increase, effective measures to ensure equal treatment between fulland part-time workers should mark the next labor policy agenda.
Working conditions in the European Union: Working time and work intensity
European Foundation, 2009
The present study discusses what work intensity is and how it can be measured. It shows that there is a strong link between work intensity and poor working conditions, both physical and psychological. Moreover, nowadays there is little indication that intensification of work is decreasing. Work intensification has developed, it is often argued, as a result of globalisation, as well as from the need to fulfil Europe's objectives of being more competitive and to create more jobs and economical growth. These are all reasons which are likely to remain, at least over the short and medium term.
BMC Public Health
Background: The pressing demands of work over the years have had a significant constraint on the family and social life of working adults. Moreover, failure to achieve a 'balance' between these domains of life may have an adverse effect on their health. This study investigated the relationship between work-life conflict and self-reported health among working adults in contemporary welfare countries in Europe. Methods: Data from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey 2015 on 32,275 working adults from 30 countries in Europe were analysed. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine the associations between work-life balance and self-reported health among men and women. We further used a 2 stage multi-level logistic regression to assess variations in self-reported health among welfare state regimes by gender. Results: The results showed a strong association between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health among working adults in Europe (aOR = 2.07; 95% CI: 1.93-2.23). However, the magnitude of the effect differed slightly by gender (men: aOR = 1.97; 95% CI: 1.78-2.18 vs women: aOR = 2.23; 95% CI: 2.01-2.47). Furthermore, we found variations in the relationship between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health between welfare states regimes. The association was found to be weaker in the Nordic and Southern welfare states than the Liberal, Conservative, and Central Eastern European welfare states. Although the associations were more consistent among men than women in the Conservative welfare states regime, we found higher associations for women than men in the Southern, Nordic, Liberal, and Central Eastern European welfare states. Conclusions: This study provides evidence of some variations in the association between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health among men and women across welfare states regimes in Europe. The results demonstrate the need for governments, organizations and policymakers to provide conducive working conditions and social policies for working adults to deal with competing demands from work and family activities.
Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2000
Study objective-To investigate the associations of various types of employment with six self reported health indicators, taking into account the part played by demographic variables, individual working conditions and four ecological indicators at the country level. Design-Cross sectional survey (structured interview) of a sample of the active population of 15 European countries aged 15 years or over. Main independent variables were nine types of employment categorised as follows: small employers, full and part time permanent employees, full and part time fixed term employees, full and part time sole traders and full and part time temporary contracts. Main outcome measures were three self reported health related outcomes (job satisfaction, health related absenteeism, and stress) and three self reported health problems (overall fatigue, backache, and muscular pains). Logistic regression and multilevel models were used in the analyses.