Employment Status and Health in Spain Before and After the Great Recession

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between employment status (ES), on one hand, and self-rated health and psychological distress, on the other, in the context of the Great Recession beginning in 2008. For this purpose, it is necessary to move beyond the employment/unemployment dichotomy characteristics of previous theories and research concerning the relationship between the labor market, recession, and health. The authors use data from the Spanish National Health Surveys in 2006 (n = 15,128), before the crisis, and in 2012 (n = 11,124), when its consequences had taken effect. The results of the regression analysis indicate a structural change in the relationship between ES and health. Health inequality patterns changed during the crisis, with increased deterioration in the health of unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed, and self-employed workers. Health inequalities were reduced for temporary workers. The results support the idea that the structure of the association between ES and health varies according to the economic cycle. The association between recession, ES, and health would be directly related to the specific characteristics of the economic and employment contexts under study. In the Spanish case, labor market segmentation processes based on numerical flexibility—a key feature of the Mediterranean Variety of Capitalism—may explain the results obtained.

Employment stability and mental health in Spain: towards understanding the influence of gender and partner/marital status

“…Paul & Moser meta-analysis [ 4 ] showed that in countries with high levels of income inequality the negative effects of unemployment on mental health were more severe than in more egalitarian countries. Spain is one of the most unequal European countries (it occupies between the 4th and 6th place in the last 10 years measured by GINI coefficient [ 14 ]). Moreover, as other Southern European countries, the unemployment protection is less generous than in other welfare state regimes such as Scandinavian, Bismarckian or Anglo-Saxon.…”

“…One interesting approach in this line is considering employment situation as a continuum that covers the entire work force and ranges from stable work situations to less favourable conditions represented by the loss of employment, passing through a line of worsening conditions [ 10 ]. Although some studies have considered this approach [ 11 – 13 ] only few had been conducted in Southern Europe [ 14 , 15 ].…”

Temporary employment, work stress and mental health before and after the Spanish economic recession

“…As far as we know, only one study has examined the effects of the recent economic recession on the association between mental health and temporary employment, reporting a declining gap in mental health between temporary and permanent employment during this period (Sánchez-Moreno et al 2016). A limitation of this latter paper, and others in the literature, is that they mostly rely on observational studies without properly accounting for compositional effects and bias reduction (Frasquilho et al 2015).…”

“…Evidence on the health effects of the economic recession in Spain has been previously reported for the unemployed (Urbanos-Garrido and Lopez-Valcarcel 2015), those attending primary care services (Gili et al 2013), and for the working population (Bartoll et al 2013). However, specific empirical evidence by type of labour contract in Spain is scarce (Sánchez-Moreno et al 2016). To shed more light on this issue, the objective of the paper is twofold.…”

From Income Inequalities to Social Exclusion: The Impact of the Great Recession on Self-Rated Health in Spain During the Onset of the Economic Crisis

“…Moreover, recent research suggests that inferences in these cases can be considered robust to violation of model assumptions in terms of Type I error and statistical power (Larrabee et al, 2014). Recent studies have adopted this strategy by using the same outcome variable (Sánchez-Moreno et al, 2016), including studies with a longitudinal design (Latif, 2020). Quantitative variables were introduced after obtaining Z -scores.…”