A shift in women’s health? Older workers’ self-reported health and employment settings during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background The first wave of COVID-19 has had a massive impact on work arrangements settings in many European countries with potential effects on health that are likely to vary across gender. Methods Focusing on the workforce aged 50 and over in 27 European countries using data from SHARE wave 8 (N = 11,221), the study applies a generalized logit mixed-effects model to assess the relationship between negative and positive change in self-reported health since the start of the pandemic and change in employment settings using an interaction effect between gender and employment arrangements to distinguish their specific association by gender after controlling for socio-economic covariates and multicollinearity. Results Female respondents have higher probabilities to declare a positive health when working fully or partially from home or when temporarily and permanently unemployed. However, introducing the main effect of gender exacerbates discrepancies and such benefits fade away. Differences across countries do not significantly change the estimates. Conclusion The benefits of work arrangements to improve women’s health during the first wave of COVID-19 have not compensated the negative effect of gender discrepancies exacerbated by the pandemic to the extent that employment arrangements have no role, or just a negative impact, in modulating them.

Social dialogue quality and workers’ health as perceived by Belgian trade union representatives during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Analyses were replicated using self-reported workers' mental health as an outcome. Estimates are of the same nature but with both higher intensities and smaller confidence intervals, indicating a stronger perceived change in mental health during the pandemic, as documented by previous studies for the global population (Patel et al, 2022) as well as for the workforce (Wels & Hamarat, 2021). Results in table 3 show a positive and statistically significant association between reporting a worse social dialogue and a poorer self-reported perceived physical health of the workers (RR:1.40, 95%CI= 1.11; 1.78) in the non-adjusted model.…”

Mental and social wellbeing and the UK Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme: evidence from nine longitudinal studies

“…The existing studies on subsidised employment show inconsistent, although mostly beneficial effects on health and wellbeing (Puig-Barrachina et al, 2020; Wels & Hamarat, 2021). For example, focusing on the restaurant industry in the US using cross-sectional data, Bufquin et al (2021) showed that working employees experienced higher levels of psychological distress, drug, and alcohol use than temporary unemployed workers.…”

Association between home working and mental health by key worker status during the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidence from four British longitudinal studies

“…Descriptive statistics during the Covid-19 pandemic have shown that home working was associated with positive experiences in terms of housework and childcare responsibilities, both for men and women, but the flip side of it was that homeworking was perceived as blurring the boundaries between work and family life 3) . In line with this, it was shown that homeworking arrangements had a positive relationship with the older workforce's self-reported health in the early stage of the pandemic, but that men's health benefited more from those arrangements than women 19) . Prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress among remote workers is indeed affected by sex, and a higher increase in both housework and working hours during the COVID-19 pandemic has been observed among women compared with men 20) , as well as a greater decline in mental health amongst women.…”

“…Mental health differences by age and sex have been constantly observed 44) and both differences have widened during the pandemic 45) but independently of labour market positions or the type of employment arrangement 19,46) . We find that younger cohorts or age groups have been reporting lower life satisfaction (except in Usoc), higher anxiety, higher depression and higher psychiatric distress compared with older cohorts or age groups throughout the pandemic.…”