Effects of precarious work on mental health: evidence from Spain

ABSTRACT

Given that a relationship has been established between employment status and psychological well-being, the deepening segmentation of the Spanish labour market may be putting the mental health of part of the population at risk. However, the relationship between work and well-being could be influenced by unobservable subjective characteristics and, consequently, two people with the same job characteristics could be affected differently by precariousness. This research tackles the problem of the unobserved heterogeneity resulting from subjective variables related to work satisfaction. A finite mixed model is applied to analyse, firstly, how jobs characterized by greater instability may affect well-being and, secondly, to study how the way in which well-being is affected could depend on how the person evaluates their job satisfaction. Data from the National Health Survey of Spain have been used to perform the analysis. We conclude that, when compared to short-term temporary contracts, self-employed and atypical situations, the stability of permanent work contracts provides greater well-being if some previous conditions of job satisfaction are met. When these conditions are not met, the protective factor provided by permanent contracts is somehow diluted, and only tenured civil servants show advantages vis-à-vis the rest of work situations.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish labour market
• finite mixed models
• psychological well-being
• work satisfaction

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C35
• I14
• I31
• J81

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contribution

All authors contributed to the study conception, design, material preparation, data collection and analysis. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript and read and approved the final manuscript.

Notes

¹ https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=lfsq_etpga&lang=en.

² Typically, a continuous shift in Spain takes place during the morning and early afternoon; a split shift means a long, “Mediterranean” lunch break and ends around 7pm; and a rotating shift includes day shifts or night shifts depending on the week.

³ For reasons of model convergence regions have been grouped into seven zones following a geographical criterion: Northern zone (Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria. Basque Country); Central zone (Castilla – La Mancha, Castilla y León, Aragon, Extremadura, Navarra, La Rioja); Mediterranean zone (Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia); Islands (Canary and Balearic Islands); Andalusia; Madrid; and Ceuta and Melilla.

⁴ Given the possible influence of wages on psychological well-being, alternative models have been estimated by introducing family income into the equation. However, this variable has about 2,000 missing values, which means a total sample loss of about 7%. Besides this loss of sample, the introduction of this variable makes convergence of the estimated model impossible. Despite this, it is expected that both education and occupation can function as proxy variables for wages.

⁵ Following the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, the term atypical work is used to define employment relationships that do not conform to the standard or ‘typical’ model of full-time, regular, open-ended employment with a single employer over a long-time span. (https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/industrial-relations-dictionary/atypical-work).

⁶ The FMM model was estimated using Stata 16 that uses the EM algorithm.

⁷ We have tried to estimate a two classes-model with job satisfaction as class determinant and another one with three classes. However, neither of these alternative models converge.

⁸ 1-directors of entities with 10 or more employees, 2^nd and 3^rd cycle degrees; 2-Directors of entities with less than 10 employees; 1^st cycle degrees; 3-Administrative employees and support professionals, security services and self-employed; 4-Skilled manual workers; 5-Semi-skilled manual workers; 6-Unqualified workers.

⁹ 1-directors of entities with 10 or more employees, 2^nd and 3^rd cycle degrees; 2-Directors of entities with less than 10 employees; 1^st cycle degrees; 3-Administrative employees and support professionals, security services and self-employed; 4-Skilled manual workers; 5-Semi-skilled manual workers; 6-Unqualified workers.

¹⁰ 1-directors of entities with 10 or more employees, 2^nd and 3^rd cycle degrees; 2-Directors of entities with less than 10 employees; 1^st cycle degrees; 3-Administrative employees and support professionals, security services and self-employed; 4-Skilled manual workers; 5-Semi-skilled manual workers; 6-Unqualified workers.

Additional information

Funding

Authors acknowledge financial support from the grant PID2020-115183RB-C21 funded by MCIN/AEI//10.13039/501100011033.