People versus Machines: The Impact of Being in an Automatable Job on Australian Worker's Mental Health and Life Satisfaction

Grace Lordan and Eliza-Jane Stringer
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Eliza-Jane Stringer: London School of Economics

No 15182, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This study explores the effect on mental health and life satisfaction of working in an automatable job. We utilise an Australian panel dataset (HILDA), and estimate models that include individual fixed effects, to estimate the association between automatable work and proxies of wellbeing. Overall, we find evidence that automatable work has a small, detrimental impact on the mental health and life satisfaction of workers within some industries, particularly those with higher levels of job automation risk, such as manufacturing. Furthermore, we find no strong trends to suggest that any particular demographic group is disproportionately impacted across industries. These findings are robust to a variety of specifications. We also find evidence of adaptation to these effects after one-year tenure on the job, indicating a limited role for firm policy.

Keywords: mental health; life satisfaction; automation; job security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 101 pages
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hea, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Economics & Human Biology 2022, 46, 101144

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Journal Article: People versus machines: The impact of being in an automatable job on Australian worker’s mental health and life satisfaction (2022)
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