Gendered impacts of precarious employment on mental health: UK longitudinal data

The existing literature has consistently found that precarious employment is associated with poorer mental health. The literature also shows that precarious employment is a gendered phenomenon, with female workers bearing the brunt of it. The association between precarious employment and health seems to affect women more strongly than men in the same situation.

This paper aims to quantitatively analyse the detrimental effects of precarious employment on mental health.

Using UK Understanding Society panel data from 2010 to 2022, we ran hybrid models to estimate the effect of precarious employment on mental health and examine gender differences in the effect of precarious employment on health using a multidimensional measure of precarious employment.

Precarious employment has a negative effect on mental health. Compared to men in similar circumstances, precarious employment seems to have a stronger impact on women's mental health. Furthermore, job tenure is negatively associated with mental health for both men and women. Finally, a positive perceived financial situation is associated with better mental health.

Our findings are in line with the existing literature and support the hypothesis that precarious employment is associated with poorer mental health. Moreover, they provide further evidence of gender differences in this association. The findings suggest that addressing the mental health implications of precarious employment, particularly for women, could be beneficial for policymakers. Future research should focus on estimating whether unpaid domestic work contributes to the observed gender differences in mental health outcomes.