Occupational Credentials and Job Qualities of Direct Care Workers: Implications for Labor Shortages

Jeounghee Kim ()
Additional contact information
Jeounghee Kim: Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Journal of Labor Research, 2020, vol. 41, issue 4, No 5, 403-420

Abstract: Abstract Occupational training and credentialing requirements for direct care workers were in place for consumers’ health and safety, but their effects on job qualities and labor shortages in the direct care industry have been controversial. Using a nationally representative sample of psychiatric, nursing, and home health aides, a series of Average Treatment Effect models were analyzed to examine the effects of occupational credentials on various measures of job qualities. The findings revealed that credential-holding was related to higher annual earnings and increased probability of working full-time, year-round, and having access to employer-provided health insurance and retirement savings plans. The positive effects, however, were modest in size and suggested that, given the current wage and benefit levels for direct care workers, training and credential requirements cannot be the key to resolving job quality and labor shortage issues in the direct care industry. Implications of these findings and alternative ways to address the issues were discussed.

Keywords: Occupational credential; Direct care workers; Long-term care workforce; Low-wage workers; Home health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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/s12122-020-09312-5 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:jlabre:v:41:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s12122-020-09312-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/12122

DOI: 10.1007/s12122-020-09312-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Labor Research is currently edited by Ozkan Eren

More articles in Journal of Labor Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().