Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Feb 10:34:e1.
doi: 10.35371/aoem.2022.34.e1. eCollection 2022.

Mental health symptoms among dependent contractors in Korea: a cross-sectional study based on the Fifth Korean Working Condition Survey

Seong-Uk Baek  1   2   3 , Sung-Shil Lim  1   2 , Sehyun Yun  1   2   4 , Won-Tae Lee  1   2   4 , Min-Seok Kim  1   2   4 , Jin-Ha Yoon  2   4   5 , Jong-Uk Won  1   2   4
Affiliations

Mental health symptoms among dependent contractors in Korea: a cross-sectional study based on the Fifth Korean Working Condition Survey

Seong-Uk Baek et al. Ann Occup Environ Med. .

Abstract

Background: Recently, there has been a call to improve the holistic welfare of dependent contractors (DCs). Thus, our study examined the relationship between DCs and mental health symptoms and how this relationship was modified by age, sex, and income status of workers.

Methods: A total of 27,980 workers from the Fifth Korean Working Conditions Survey are included in our study. The participants who reported having depression or anxiety over the last 12 months are defined those who had mental health symptoms. We performed exact matching for age group and sex, followed by conditional logistic regression with survey weights. Finally, stratified analyses by age, sex and income level were conducted.

Results: DCs were found to be at increased risk of depression/anxiety compared to other workers. The odds ratio (OR) is 1.52 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06-2.17). In the stratified analyses, vulnerable groups were middle-aged (OR [95% CI]: 1.68 [1.10-2.54]), female (OR [95% CI]: 1.85 [1.20-2.84]), and low-income (OR [95% CI]: 3.18 [1.77-5.73]) workers.

Conclusions: Our study's results reinforce those of other studies that show that DCs are at greater risk of experiencing mental health issues than other workers and that and this risk is greater for middle-aged, female, and low-income workers. These results suggest that appropriate policy efforts should be made to improve the psychological well-being of DCs.

Keywords: Anxiety; Dependent contractor; Depression; Worker in special employment types.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Flowchart of selection of study population.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Results of the stratified analyses of the relationship between dependent contractors and mental health symptoms by age, sex, and income level using the fully adjusted model.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Nyombi C. A response to the challenges posed by the binary divide between employee and self-employed. Int J Law Manag. 2015;57(1):3–16.
    1. Williams C, Lapeyre F. Dependent Self-Employment: Trends, Challenges and Policy Responses in the EU. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization; 2017.
    1. International Labour Office. Resolution Concerning Statistics on Work Relationships; 20th International Conference of Labour Statisticians; October 10, 2018; Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization; 2018.
    1. Statistics Korea. Supplementary results of the economically active population survey by employment type in August 2020. [Updated 2020]. [Accessed October 19, 2021]. http://kostat.go.kr/portal/eng/pressReleases/5/5/index.board?bmode=read&...
    1. Cherry MA, Aloisi A. Dependent contractors in the gig economy: a comparative approach. Am UL Rev. 2016;66:635.

LinkOut - more resources