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It is well known that physical and mental health are closely related, with growing evidence for biological and behavioural pathways. Mostly the research has focussed on mental health as the key driver of this inter-connection; the extent physical health shapes mental health has received less attention. We aim to derive robust estimates of the unique role physical health may play in shaping mental health outcomes. To do so we use a novel approach, incorporating longitudinal and instrumental variable methods which can address the reciprocal relationship between physical and mental health, and the endogeneity of physical health, before estimating the physical to mental health pathway. A sample of 209,442 observations (or 24,966 unique individuals) aged 15 and over spanning 18 years (2002–2019) was extracted from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australian Survey (HILDA). We find that physical activity and health shocks erode mental health via their impact on physical health with a one point improvement (or worsening) in physical health scores (0–100) resulting in a rise (or decline) of 0.43 points (or 43%) in mental health score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealanders can cross borders freely, work and live in Australia indefinitely thanks to the Trans‐Tasman Travel Agreement. This paper uses a recently developed decomposition method to decompose the weekly wage gap at various quantiles on the wage distribution between New Zealand‐born (NZ‐born) and Australian‐born workers, and between NZ‐born workers, migrants from other English speaking countries (OESC), and from non‐English speaking countries (NESC) to determine how free and regulated migration influences migrants' performance in the Australian labour market. We found that NZ‐born workers earned higher weekly wages than both Australian‐born and NESC workers but earned lower wages than OESC migrants. Differences in endowment were primarily responsible for the wage gaps between NZ‐born and Australian‐born workers and between NZ‐born and OESC migrants. However, differences in returns to worker and job characteristics are mainly responsible for the wage gap between NZ‐born and NESC migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiencing poor sleep quality affects an individual's health and wellbeing. Sleep quality is well evidenced to be influenced by work conditions such as long work hours, work stress and shift work, but there is little evidence on the relationship between high work intensity and sleep quality. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey waves 2013 and 2017, this study applies lagged models to investigate whether experiencing poor sleep, a derived comprehensive measure of sleep quality, is associated with work intensity. This study uses a nationally representative sample of 13,661 working Australian individuals aged 25–64 and finds a strong positive association between work intensity and sleep quality, with an individual's sleep quality worsening as their work intensity increased. The association between work intensity and sleep quality is even stronger than that between long work hours and sleep quality. This suggests a potential benefit for the development and implementation of workplace policies that seek to reduce work intensity. Doing so could help address challenges surrounding sleep in Australia and lead to better work and health outcomes for individuals, workplaces and broader society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assumptions about time, value, labour, and health coalesce in the policy decision to extend the pension eligibility age in Australia from 65 to 67 years. Acknowledging the multiple, often incompatible ways in which time is conceptualised and experienced, we question the expectation of extending Australians' working lives. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 19 male and female bus drivers over the age of 55 in Australia, we illustrate that older blue collar workers may accumulate chronic health conditions that not only limit their ability to maintain the strict time-discipline required to remain in the workforce, but also introduce demands on their time beyond paid employment (including those required for the management of chronic health conditions). Poor health, and the multiple ways in which it constrains labour participation and time, fosters diverse, unequal, and uneven experiences of the final years of work for these blue collar workers, which may not allow them to meet the policy expectation to work until the age of 67. We argue that by failing to acknowledge the long-term health effects of blue collar work and its work-limiting bodily effects, raising the pension age devalues industrial work histories and manual labour. Finally, acknowledging the social milestone of retirement, we question the moral dimensions of extending the pension eligibility age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The adverse impacts of exposure to work intensity on mental health have been widely studied. However, there is a lack of research examining who is most vulnerable in terms of position on the mental health distribution. The current study aims to: (a) initially estimate the average impacts of work intensity on workers' mental health in Australia, and then (b) estimate the extent to which this effect varies across the mental health distribution. Materials and methods: The current study uses data from waves 2005-–2017 of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. It first employs Average Treatment Effect (ATE) to provide a baseline/average treatment effect for the whole population, and then applies Quantile Regression fixed effects models for various quantiles on the mental health distribution. Discussion and conclusion: The baseline estimates show that there are significantly negative effects of work intensity on mental health for the whole population, but importantly the quantile fixed effect estimates show that these adverse effects are substantially stronger for those with the poorest mental health (i.e. at the bottom of the distribution). When ATE alone is estimated, the significant effect is averaged over the mental health distribution, missing important information regarding the heterogeneity of the effect. The findings have important implications for understanding and reducing mental health inequality, particularly inequality driven by workplace stress. First, they align with existing research demonstrating the importance of reducing psychosocial job stressors. Second, given workers with mental health problems were most susceptible to the adverse effects of work intensity, there is a need to offer additional support (and be sensitive of workloads) for this group in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's employment equality remains compromised by wage and work hour gaps, despite decades of policy action. Shorter work hours are a key to persisting disadvantage because they lock women out of high paying, good quality jobs. Such hour gaps are observed across all countries, and this paper quantifies the reasons behind them. We applied the Oaxaca decomposition method to a sample of employed adults from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA). The method can show how the work hour gap would change if (a) women had the same sort of jobs (industry, occupation, work conditions, contract type) as men have and (b) if men lowered their work hours and/or increased their domestic unpaid work. We find that men's allocation of time in and out of the home and the jobs women typically work in are central to explaining unequal paid hours. Women's hours would increase (all else being equal) if they worked in the same industries and had the same job security as men have, accounting for 74% of the explained work hour difference. Women's hours would also increase if they did the same (lower) domestic work as men, or if men worked the same (shorter) hours women typically do (33.4% of the explained gap). Our study, using Australian data, underscores the need to prioritize men's time use (shorter paid hours, longer unpaid hours) alongside improvement in jobs and work conditions to progress gender equality in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While several studies have estimated returns to education in Australia, there is limited evidence regarding the influence of health on the returns. This paper identifies how health affects returns to education in the labour market using the Heckman selection bias-corrected model. We measured health status using a self-rated health item with five response categories 'poor, fair, good, very good, and excellent'. The findings show that poor health or being unhealthy (defined as 'poor' or 'fair') interacts with education, such that the benefits of education (i.e. higher hourly wage rate) are curtailed in those with health problems; the adverse effect is stronger for those in lower skilled jobs. The estimated returns to an additional year of schooling on average over 2001-2017 is 7.43% and 6.88% for the healthy and unhealthy groups, respectively. Thus, the return for workers with poor health is 7.4% lower than the return for healthier workers (for each additional year of schooling). This gap in the returns is equivalent to a productivity loss of about $19-25 billion per year. The lower returns to education for workers with poor health likely results from lower productivity while at work rather than loss of working days as the estimate is based on an hourly wage rate (rather than days or hours absent from work). These lower returns may also be explained by unhealthy workers accepting lower paid jobs given the same levels of experience, skills and education that healthier counterparts have. The cost of poor health to labour market returns is further amplified in low-skilled occupations, a process which is likely to exacerbate socio-economic inequalities and undercut social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]