1. Understanding the health outcomes of the work pattern transformation in the age of gig economy: an investigation of the association between multiple-job holding and health status in the United States and China.
- Author
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Yuan B, Lan J, and Li J
- Subjects
- Adult, Aged, China, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Middle Aged, Outcome Assessment, Health Care, Socioeconomic Factors, United States, Employment, Health Status
- Abstract
Objective: The Slash (multiple-job holders) become increasingly prevalent in the labor force under the context of fast-developing gig economy and other emerging employment forms active on platforms. However, health outcomes of multiple-job holding have not received sufficient research treatment and is far from reaching consensus. This study provides an empirical investigation on the influence of multiple-job holding on individual health., Method: This study uses data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS-2015 survey) which covers 28 provinces/municipalities in China and tracks work and health status of the population aged over 45 years using stratified random sampling (N = 12,659-16,526 for examinations of different types of health status (i.e., chronic conditions/body aches/depression, in study 1), and from the Survey of Household Economics and Decision-making (SHED-2019) which is conducted by the Federal Reserve Board of the United States and documents economic behavior and related risks of the population aged over 18 years (N = 6603 for baseline model and N = 10,718 for supplementary test, in study 2). To address the potential endogeneity of multiple-job holding, the instrumental variable (IV) regressions are conducted to ensure the validity of results. The implementation of Study 1 and 2 in different national context could help test the generalization of research results., Results: Compared with non-multiple jobs holding, multiple-job holding with only one additional job is associated with better health status (i.e., less chronic conditions and body aches, a lower level of depression shown in study 1, and better self-assessed general health shown in study 2), however, multiple-job holding with at least two additional jobs turns to be associated with worse health status (shown in both study 1 and 2). These results show that the optimal level of multiple-job holding could be featured with one additional job besides the primary job., Conclusion: Multiple-job holding, with different structures, has both bright and dark side for health outcomes. To maintain an optimal level of multiple-job holding could benefit individual health., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)
- Published
- 2022
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