Impact of Long Working Hours and Shift Work on Perceived Unmet Dental Need: A Panel Study

This study investigates whether workers with long working hours as well as shift workers perceive higher unmet dental care needs, and whether there is a gender difference in the associations. We used the Korea Health Panel (2009, 2011-2014) involving 20,451 person-wave observations from 5567 individuals. Perceived unmet dental care needs was defined when the participants reported that they perceived a need for dental treatment or check-up but had failed to receive dental care services during the past year. Fixed effects logit models were applied to examine how changes in weekly working hours or shift work status were linked to changes in perceived unmet dental needs within each individual. Among participants, 15.9-24.7% reported perceived unmet dental needs and the most common reason was time scarcity. We found that long working hours (>52 h/week) was significantly associated with perceived unmet dental needs due to time scarcity in both men (OR = 1.42, 95% CI 1.13-1.78) and women (OR = 1.35, 95% CI 1.03-1.79) compared workers working 40-52 h per week. Shift work was also a significant risk factor, but only in women (OR = 1.57, 95% CI 1.06-2.32). These findings provide evidence for labor policies to reduce working hours in order to improve access to dental care services.