Mechanisms Linking Employment Type and Health: Panel Data Analysis with Fixed-Effects Models

Using twelve waves of data from the Korean Welfare Panel Study (2006-2017), we evaluate mechanisms linking employment type to various health outcomes, including depression, self-esteem, and self-rated health with a focus on differences between standard and other types of employment. Guided by prior research, we examine several mechanisms such as economic insecurity and psychosocial stressors, using fixed-effects models that control for unobserved time-invariant individual heterogeneity. Our findings confirm the importance of selection in that much of the association between employment type and health observed in simple cross-sectional OLS models loses significance in fixed-effects models. We also find supporting evidence for the mediating role of economic insecurity and psychosocial stressors. For instance, the lower levels of satisfaction in job and life conditions help explain lower self-esteem of male nonstandard workers relative to standard workers. It is also interesting that the hypothesized mediators often suppress the relationship between employment status and health in which a significant relationship is revealed only when the specific mediator is taken into account. Findings of this study will shed valuable insights on the pathways in which specific employment types affect men’s and women’s health outcomes.