Longitudinal employment patterns and parental health: A cross-country look

Using a cross-country lens, we investigate the links between longitudinal work trajectories and health among parents with children under age 18.

Employment serves as a valuable resource, affording us a decent standard of living. The rising dominance of digital and technology, together with the service economy since the 1980s, has transformed the utility of employment from a resource to a vulnerability, subjecting more families to uncertain, unstable, and insecure work. Nonstandard work schedules or shiftwork, which often fall outside regular 9-to-5 daytime hours and can be unpredictable, carry potential health consequences.

Using the longitudinal data from Australia (HILDA), Germany (SOEP), the UK (UKHLS), and the US (NLSY79), we used sequence analysis to first chart parental work schedule patterns between three stages of the life course, 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54, to show the changes and transitions in work patterns. We then conducted multivariate regression analysis to examine how variations in parental work patterns may shape individual health (i.e., physical and mental health) at ages 35/40, 45/50, and 55/60 while controlling for a rich set of sociodemographic characteristics.

Our sequence analyses uncovered roughly 4-6 work patterns during those three periods, revealing the heterogeneities of parental work trajectories that might correspond to childrearing demands and their sociodemographic backgrounds. We also found that mainly not-working pattern or volatile work arrangements (e.g., switching between daytime and non-daytime hours) were associated with significantly poorer physical and mental health; however, the persistence and magnitude of these associations varied by country.

This study advances our understanding of the critical role of employment in our health from a cross-country perspective and bears important implications for the intergenerational transmission of employment and health vulnerabilities.