Abstract
BackgroundTo investigate the association between long working hours and self-rated health (SRH), examining the roles of potential confounding and mediating factors, such as job characteristics.MethodsData were pooled from seven waves (2005–2011) of the Korean Labour and Income Panel Study. A total of 1578 workers who consecutively participated in all seven study years were available for analysis. A generalized estimating equation for repeated measures with binary outcome was used to examine the association between working hours (five categories; 20–35, 36–40, 41–52, 53–68 and ≥69 h) and SRH (two categories; poor and good health), considering possible confounders and serial correlation.ResultsAssociations between working hours and SRH were observed among women, but only for the category of the shortest working hours among men. The associations with the category of shortest working hours among men and women disappeared after adjustment for socioeconomic factors. Among women, though not men, working longer than standard hours (36–40 h) showed a linear association with poor health; OR = 1.41 (95 % CI = 1.08–1.84) for 52–68 working hours and OR = 2.11 (95 % CI = 1.42–3.12) for ≥69 working hours. This association persisted after serial adjustments. However, it was substantially attenuated with the addition of socioeconomic factors (e.g., OR = 1.66 (95 % CI = 1.07–2.57)) but only slightly attenuated with further adjustment for behavioural factors (e.g., OR = 1.63 (95 % CI = 1.05–2.53)). The associations with job satisfaction were significant for men and women.ConclusionsThe worsening of SRH with increasing working hours only among women suggests that female workers are more vulnerable to long working hours because of family responsibilities in addition to their workload.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2641-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
To investigate the association between long working hours and self-rated health (SRH), examining the roles of potential confounding and mediating factors, such as job characteristics
Inconsistency in associations of long working hours has been observed for diabetes [10], health behaviour [11], obesity [12], suicide [13], and self-rated health (SRH) [14]
Given insufficient understanding of some details, we investigated the association between working hours and SRH using a large Korean longitudinal data
Summary
To investigate the association between long working hours and self-rated health (SRH), examining the roles of potential confounding and mediating factors, such as job characteristics. Legal working hours in Korea are 40 h per week based on a five-day working week system with the establishment of a legal limitation of working hour per week – not to exceed 52 h This legislation was introduced in 2004 from public sector and companies with over 1000 full-time workers and gradually extended to Globally, and recently in Korea, previous studies reported, with sufficient evidence, the negative effects of long working hours on health, including depressive symptoms [2,3,4], sleep disturbance [5, 6] and cardiovascular disease [7,8,9,10], which is often best recognized by the word karoshi (death from overwork). With the expansion of precarious work over recent decades, the components of long working hours have become increasingly less standardized and have become a function of many factors: job insecurity, autonomy, enjoyment and self-fulfilment, high demands, work schedule, and job satisfaction [8, 15,16,17]
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