Work–Life Imbalance and Musculoskeletal Disorders among South Korean Workers

Young-Mee Kim and Sung-il Cho
Additional contact information
Young-Mee Kim: Department of Public Health Science, Graduate School of Public Health, and Institute of Health and Environment, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea
Sung-il Cho: Department of Public Health Science, Graduate School of Public Health, and Institute of Health and Environment, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Employed workers often have family responsibilities such as childcare or homemaking. This dual burden may increase work-related health problems, particularly if there are conflicts between work and family responsibilities. This study assessed whether difficulty in work–life balance is associated with musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) among Korean employees. Data from the population-based Korean Working Conditions Survey of 2011, including 28,640 male and 21,392 female workers, were used. Men and women were analyzed separately to investigate gender differences. MSD were defined as pain in the back, neck, shoulder, or extremities during the past year. Self-assessed difficulty in work–life balance was defined as a work–life conflict (WLC). Adjustments for physical factors, as well as other occupational and socio-demographic variables, were made using multiple logistic regression analysis. Interaction terms including WLCs and key covariates were also incorporated. WLC was significantly associated with increased frequency of MSD in both men (OR: 1.49) and women (OR: 1.50). There were significant interaction effects between WLC and some key covariates (job stress for men and job stress, work hours, physical demand, and frequent overtime work for women). We suggest that having the flexibility to coordinate work and family life is important to prevent MSD among employees.

Keywords: work–life conflict; work–family conflict; musculoskeletal disorder; gender differences; population-based study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/11/1331/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/11/1331/ (text/html)

Related works:
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:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:11:p:1331-:d:117207

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().