The hidden costs of informal work: lack of social protection and subjective well-being in Colombia

David A. Hurtado (), Philipp Hessel and Mauricio Avendano
Additional contact information
David A. Hurtado: Oregon Health and Science University
Philipp Hessel: Harvard University
Mauricio Avendano: King’s College London, London School of Economics and Political Science

International Journal of Public Health, 2017, vol. 62, issue 2, No 3, 187-196

Abstract: Abstract Objectives To examine the association between informal work and subjective well-being in Colombia. Methods Repeated cross-sectional study based on data from three nationally representative surveys of 1997, 2005 and 2011 (n = 4485). Life satisfaction was measured with a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 10 points. Informal work was defined as paid work without pension/unemployment contributions. Individual-level pooled Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) models were used to assess the association between informal work and life satisfaction. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was applied to address potential selection into informal work. Results Informal work increased from 52 % in 1997 to 68 % in 2011. Informal workers averaged significantly lower life satisfaction than formal (GEE: b = −0.14, 95 % CI −0.26, −0.01, p

Keywords: Informal work; Social protection; Life satisfaction; Colombia; Subjective well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00038-016-0864-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:ijphth:v:62:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s00038-016-0864-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/00038

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-016-0864-2

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Thomas Kohlmann, Nino Künzli and Andrea Madarasova Geckova

More articles in International Journal of Public Health from Springer, Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().