The Change of Self-Rated Health According to Working Hours for Two Years by Gender

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to confirm the association between working hours and self-rated health, and to find the degree of changes in health level by working hours according to gender. Methods: This study was based on the 929 workers (571 men and 358 women) from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study during 2004–2006. To minimize the healthy worker effects, the study subjects included only those who did not have any chronic diseases, and who answered their health status as “moderate” or above in the baseline. Logistic regression analysis was used to confirm the associations between working hours and self-rated health. Results: In men, working hours per week of 47–52 h, 53–68 h, and >68 h were associated with 1.2, 1.3, and 1.1 times increases, respectively, in the odds ratio on worsened self-rated health, compared with the reference group (40–46 h). On the other hand, the risks were 1.0, 2.2, and 2.6 times increases in women. However, the results were different according to gender in the group with less than 40 h. The men with less than 40 h had a 0.9 times odds ratio on worsened self-rated health. For the women with less than 40 h, the odds ratio on self-rated health was 5.4 times higher than the reference group. Conclusions: Working more than 52 h per week had a negative effect on health, regardless of gender. However, in the group with less than 40 h, the negative association between working hours and self-rated health were shown only in women. Health outcomes due to working hours may differ by gender. Therefore, further studies are needed to explore the causes of these results.

Association between Working Hours and Self-Rated Health

“…Several studies indicated the adverse effects of long working hours on SRH, which is attributed to high job demands accompanied by long working hours [16][17][18][19], and the results of the present study support them. Additionally, short working hours are related to precarious working conditions [23] (temporary or daily, part-time, or contingent jobs), which are associated with poor health [16,[24][25][26][27].…”

“…The result that women working long hours showed poorer SRH than men working long hours can be explained by the "double burden" of household and working duties of women [16,28]. This is why service and sales workers, of which women's proportion was 63.7% in the present study, showed an unhealthy association with long working hours.…”

“…Such an association was also reported in young workers [18]. However, most of the studies investigated the trends of SRH with the stratification of only sex [16,18,19].…”

“…Several studies investigated the associations between working hours and SRH. Two of these studies revealed that long working hours [16,17] and short working hours [17] were associated with poor SRH, more commonly among women. Such an association was also reported in young workers [18].…”

Association between Occupational Characteristics and Overweight and Obesity among Working Korean Women: The 2010–2015 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

“…According to Jang et al, the likelihood of obesity increased by 1.65 times among Korean male manual workers working ≥60 h per week, but not significantly among females [20]. As shown above, working for extended hours negatively affects health in various ways [21][22][23][24]. Korea, however, ranks second among the OECD countries in total working hours, with mean annual hours worked of 1993, which is 259 h higher than the OECD average of 1734 h [25].…”