Extra Status and Extra Stress: Are Promotions Good for Us?

David Johnston and Wang-Sheng Lee

ILR Review, 2013, vol. 66, issue 1, 32-54

Abstract: Promotions ordinarily involve higher wages and greater privileges; but often they also increase responsibility, accountability, and work hours. Therefore, whether promotions are good for workers' well-being is an empirical question. Using high-quality panel data the authors estimate pre- and post-promotion effects on job attributes, physical health, mental health, and life satisfaction in an attempt at answering this question. They find that promotions substantially improve job security, pay perceptions, and overall job satisfaction in the short term, and that promotions have short- and longer-term effects on job control, job stress, income, and hours worked. Despite these large effects on job attributes, however, promotions have negligible effects on workers' health and happiness. Only mental health seems affected, with estimates suggesting significant deterioration two years after receiving a promotion. Thus, the authors conclude that the additional stress involved with promotions eventually outweighs the additional status, at least for the average worker.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979391306600102 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Extra Status and Extra Stress: Are Promotions Good for Us? (2012)
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:sae:ilrrev:v:66:y:2013:i:1:p:32-54

DOI: 10.1177/001979391306600102

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().