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. 2018 Jun 5:30:38.
doi: 10.1186/s40557-018-0250-z. eCollection 2018.

The work-life balance and psychosocial well-being of South Korean workers

Jae Won Yang  1 , Chunhui Suh  1 , Chae Kwan Lee  1 , Byung Chul Son  1
Affiliations

The work-life balance and psychosocial well-being of South Korean workers

Jae Won Yang et al. Ann Occup Environ Med. .

Abstract

Background: It is challenging to balance work and life, and little attention has been paid to the work-life balance and psychosocial well-being of South Koreans. We assessed the association between work-life balance and psychosocial well-being among paid Korean workers.

Methods: This study was based on data from the fourth Korean Working Conditions Survey. We evaluated only paid workers, which constituted 30,649 of the total of 50,007 subjects surveyed. Poor work-life balance was defined based on the goodness of fit between working hours and social commitments. Well-being was measured using the World Health Organization WHO-5 index. Poisson regression with robust variances was used to calculate the estimated prevalence ratios (PRs) with confidence intervals.

Results: Poor work-life balance was associated with poor psychosocial well-being (PR = 1.25; 95% CI 1.21 to 1.28) even after adjusting for work-related and individual characteristics. Poor well-being was associated with low-level job autonomy (PR = 1.06; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.09), working for ≥53 h per week (PR = 1.10; 95% CI 1.06 to 1.14), blue-collar status (PR = 1.16; 95% CI 1.11 to 1.21), low-level support at work (PR = 1.32; 95% CI 1.29 to 1.36), age ≥ 50 years (PR = 1.21; 95% CI 1.15 to 1.26), the female gender (95% CI PR = 1.04; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.07), and cohabitation (living with somebody) (PR = 1.08; 95% CI 1.04 to 1.12). Good well-being was associated with high-intensity work (PR = 0.96; 95% CI 0.94 to 0.99), being the secondary earner in a household (PR = 0.82; 95% CI 0.79 to 0.85), and higher income (PR = 0.75; 95% CI 0.71 to 0.79).

Conclusion: Work-life balance was associated with psychosocial well-being after adjusting for both work-related and individual characteristics.

Keywords: KWCS; Psychosocial well-being; WHO-5 index; Work–life balance.

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Conflict of interest statement

Not applicable.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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