Abstract
Objectives: Although in-work poverty has been increasing, in Europe policy about poverty and social exclusion tends to focus on labor market participation, independently of the level of remuneration and the quality of work, and studies about financial strain among workers, as well as on its relationship with health status, are still scarce. The objectives of this study were: (1) to compare the prevalence of financial strain among workers among different welfare state typologies, and (2) to examine whether the relationship between financial strain and health status differs by welfare state regime. For both objectives we examined whether there were gender differences.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey of 2015 and selected a subsample of all employees from the EU28 aged 16–64 years (13,156 men and 13,225 women).Results: There were large differences in the prevalence of financial strain between welfare state typologies, which were not explained by individual factors. Additionally, differences across welfare regimes were greater among women. Nordic countries had the lowest prevalence (12.1% among men and 12.3% among women) whereas Southern European countries had the highest (49.5% among men and 47.9% among women). In both sexes and in all welfare state typologies, financial strain was associated with poor self-perceived health status and poor psychological well-being. Whereas, Southern European countries had the highest prevalence of financial strain, the magnitude of the association with health status was smaller than in other country typologies.Conclusion: In Europe, policies are needed to address the specific structural factors leading to financial strain as well as its relationship with health status among workers.
Highlights
Since the global economic crisis that started in 2007/2008, in-work poverty has been increasing [1]
The EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EUSILC) considers individuals to be at risk of in-work poverty if they work for over half of the year and have an equivalized yearly disposable household income below 60% of the median national household income [4]
Since health problems may reduce the chance of having a good quality job, to avoid possible reverse causation, we excluded from our analysis all individuals who reported a limiting long-standing illness (LLI)
Summary
Since the global economic crisis that started in 2007/2008, in-work poverty has been increasing [1]. Several studies indicate that objective measures of income do not capture the meaning of income adequacy to individuals, with people on low incomes not always reporting financial strain, which indicates that these two measures are different [5, 6]. Financial strain is one of the greatest stressors encountered during adulthood, and has been shown to be related to poor health status, independently of other measures of socio-economic position and demographic characteristics [8, 9]. It has been reported that people with financial strain are more likely to have unhealthy behaviors [12]
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