Quality of employment trajectories and mental health: the role of gender and social norms

Quality of employment trajectories and mental health: the role of gender and social norms

2021 – 2024 | FWO

Objective

Two research challenges are present in the study of employment quality (i.e. the conditions and relations of employment) as a health determinant: ambiguous definitions of the original concept and a lack of insight into the pathways through which low-quality employment arrangements harms worker mental health. Therefore, a novel approach within this field will be introduced: the construction of a typology of trajectories of employment arrangements. Moreover, I will probe into the moderating role of individual- and societal-level social norms for the relation between quality of employment trajectories and mental health. Social norms have been suggested to play a buffering role, but it has never been directly studied. Because of the abundant presence of gender norms in society, the proposed research will be conducted with a gender perspective.

Three research objectives are central: 1) Investigating the causal relation between a typology of trajectories of employment quality arrangements and mental health; 2) Examining gender differences in the relation between the typology of trajectories of employment quality arrangements and mental health; 3) Investigating whether social norms moderate the longitudinal relation between health and the typology of trajectories of employment quality arrangements and the gender inequalities therein. For this purpose, the German Socio- Economic Panel, a wide-ranging representative longitudinal study of private households in Germany, is used.