Temporary employment, work stress and mental health before and after the Spanish economic recession

Abstract

Purpose: This paper analyses the effects of temporary employment on work stress and mental health before (2006/2007) and during the economic recession (2011/2012), and examines whether the economic recession worsened these two health outcomes.

Methods: To control for selection bias, propensity scores (PS) are computed separately for salaried men and women using microdata from two cross-sectional health surveys in Spain, considering temporary (treatment group) versus permanent employment (control group). Next, we use difference-in-difference estimators stratifying by age, education level, and regional unemployment differences using PS as weights.

Results: Our results indicate that salaried worker with a temporary labour contract tends to have similar levels of high work stress and poorer mental health (only for men) than permanent ones for both periods. The economic recession does not appear to worsen both outcomes. However, when stratifying the sample, the economic recession is responsible for increasing stress among older temporary workers and male university graduates, without affecting women. Regarding mental health, we only find evidence of a negative impact of the economic recession on male temporary workers with university education.

Conclusion: The economic recession has not affected poor mental health, but it has accentuated the adverse effects of work stress among some specific subgroups of male workers. These subgroups require specific preventive and support actions as the Spanish firms have not substantially changed their hiring practices after the recession.

Keywords: Economic recession; Mental health; Propensity score weighting; Temporary employment; Work stress.