Does disability status modify the association between psychosocial job quality and mental health? A longitudinal fixed-effects analysis
Section snippets
Background
In Australia, approximately 2.2 million (14.4%) of working-age people (14–64 years) have a disability (defined as long-term health conditions, impairments or disabilities that restricts everyday activities), with just over 50% of these people being women. Nearly half (47.3%) of people with disabilities were not in the labour force in 2015, meaning they were neither employed nor actively looking for work, compared to 17.5% of people without a disability (ABS, 2015, OECD, 2009). The low labour
Data source
The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey is a longitudinal, nationally representative study of Australian households established in 2001. It collects detailed information annually from over 13,000 individuals within over 7000 households (Wilkins, 2013). The response rate to wave 1 was 66% (Wilkins, 2013). The survey covers a range of dimensions including social, demographic, health and economic conditions using a combination of face-to-face interviews with trained
Describing the sample
Table 1 shows characteristics of the sample over the 13 waves of data. The largest group is “non-disability” with 12,383 people (60,152 observations, 49% obs), followed by intermittent disability group with 7473 (55,317 observations, 45% obs). There were 1992 people (7414 observations, 6% obs) with consistent disability There were slightly more females in the entire sample. Those who had never had a disability were on average 10 years younger than those with consistent disability. Mental health
Discussion and conclusions
This study demonstrates considerable differences in the association between psychosocial job quality and mental health depending on reported disability status. For people without a disability, the poorest psychosocial quality jobs were associated with the poorest mental health relative to optimal working conditions. By comparison, for those with a disability, poor psychosocial quality jobs, unemployment and NILF were similarly associated with poor mental health relative to optimal psychosocial
Acknowledgments
This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the author and should not be attributed to either DSS or the Melbourne Institute. The data used in this
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