Working-Time Mismatch and Mental Health

Steffen Otterbach (), Mark Wooden and King Fok

No 843, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: Nationally representative panel survey data for Germany and Australia are used to investigate the impact of working-time mismatches (i.e., differences between actual and desired work hours) on mental health, as measured by the Mental Component Summary Score from the SF-12. Fixed effects and dynamic linear models are estimated, which, together with the longitudinal nature of the data, enable person-specific traits that are time invariant to be controlled for. The incorporation of dynamics also reduces concerns about the potential effects of reverse causation. The results suggest that overemployment (working more hours than desired) has adverse consequences for the mental health of workers in both countries. Underemployment (working fewer hours than desired), however, seems to only be of significance in Australia.

Keywords: Australia; Germany; mental health; Mental Component Summary Score (SF-12); longitudinal data; work hours; working-time mismatch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 p.
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.535401.de/diw_sp0843.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Working-Time Mismatch and Mental Health (2016)
Working Paper: Working-Time Mismatch and Mental Health (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp843

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().