The impact of precarious employment on mental health: The case of Italy
The impact of precarious employment on mental health: The case of Italy
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DOI：
10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.03.008
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发表时间：
2016-06-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Vittadini, G.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Moscone, F.;Tosetti, E.;Vittadini, G.
尽管有大量实证文献衡量工作不稳定对工人心理健康的影响，但争论仍然存在，了解这种关系的真实性质具有重要的政策意义。在本文中，我们使用一个独特的、非常大的数据集来调查不稳定的就业对心理健康的影响，该数据集将 2007-2011 年意大利超过 270 万名员工的工作合同信息与其精神药物处方相匹配。我们研究了临时合同、其期限以及一年内合同变更次数对开出一张或多张治疗心理健康问题药物处方的概率的因果影响。为此，我们估计了动态 Probit 模型，并采用工具变量方法处理回归变量的潜在内生性。作为工具，我们使用公司层面的临时工概率以及其他不依赖于工人精神疾病状况的公司层面变量。我们的结果表明，临时工作合同下的工人获得精神药物处方的概率更高。临时合同的工作天数增加以及临时合同的频繁变更显着增加了出现需要接受治疗的心理健康问题的可能性。我们还发现，从长期工作转为临时工作会增加精神疾病的发生；对称地，虽然绝对值的影响较小，但从临时就业转向长期就业往往会减少它。旨在通过增加临时合同来提高劳动力市场灵活性的政策干预措施还应考虑到这些改革在雇员心理健康方面的社会和经济成本。 (C) 2016 年由爱思唯尔有限公司出版。
Although there has been a sizeable empirical literature measuring the effect of job precariousness on the mental health of workers the debate is still open, and understanding the true nature of such relationship has important policy implications.In this paper, we investigate the impact of precarious employment on mental health using a unique, very large data set that matches information on job contracts for over 2.7 million employees in Italy followed over the years 2007-2011, with their psychotropic medication prescription. We examine the causal effects of temporary contracts, their duration and the number of contract changes during the year on the probability of having one or more prescriptions for medication to treat mental health problems. To this end, we estimate a dynamic Probit model, and deal with the potential endogeneity of regressors by adopting an instrumental variables approach. As instruments, we use firm-level probabilities of being a temporary worker as well as other firm-level variables that do not depend on the mental illness status of the workers.Our results show that the probability of psychotropic medication prescription is higher for workers under temporary job contracts. More days of work under temporary contract as well as frequent changes in temporary contract significantly increase the probability of developing mental health problems that need to be medically treated. We also find that moving from permanent to temporary employment increases mental illness; symmetrically, although with a smaller effect in absolute value, moving from temporary to permanent employment tends to reduce it. Policy interventions aimed at increasing the flexibility of the labour market through an increase of temporary contracts should also take into account the social and economic cost of these reforms, in terms of psychological wellbeing of employees. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.