What is the relationship between long working hours, over-employment, under-employment and the subjective well-being of workers? Longitudinal evidence from the UK

By David Angrave, Andy Charlwood. 2015

152 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Are long working hours, over-employment and under-employment associated with a reduction in subjective well-being? If they are, is the association long or short-lasting? This article answers these questions through within-person analysis of a nationally representative longitudinal survey from the United Kingdom. The results suggest that long working hours do not directly affect subjective well-being, but in line with theories of person–environment fit, both over-employment and under-employment are associated with lower subjective well-being. However, over-employment is more likely for those who work the longest hours. The duration of the subjective well-being penalty associated with over-employment and under-employment is typically short, but subjective well-being levels tend to remain depressed for those who remain over-employed for two years or more. Results imply that state and organizational policies that reduce the incidence of long hours working are likely to enhance aggregate well-being levels.

Subfields: Demography, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b3f02b4cbcc8271ac6267a037eb705591600a26

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Demography

1. C. Frey
2. F. Cnossen
3. Milena Nikolova
4. H. Bakhshi

In General Health Professions

1. F. Cnossen
2. C. Frey
3. Milena Nikolova
4. Thor Berger

Citations in the corpus

• What makes work meaningful and why economists should care about it (2020, background): “2 Job satisfaction is a reflective assessment of one’s overall working environment that also incorporates expectations, norms, values, alternatives, and the outcomes and rewards of work (Angrave and Charlwood, 2015; Weiss, 2002).”
• Uber happy? Work and well-being in the ‘Gig Economy’ (2019, background): “A non-existent link between hours spent logged into the Uber app and life satisfaction among drivers is interesting in light of a substantial debate over whether working long hours has a causal negative effect on subjective well-being, or whether it simply reflects a mismatch between actual and pref”