The association of reduced weekly working hours and the mental health of working individuals over 40

• Main Authors: Goh, Ariele Jia Ling, Lim, Maxine Ying Yi, George, Sonam
• Other Authors: Akshar Saxena
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/166342
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The debate regarding shortening working hours has been increasingly relevant. Long working hours have been associated with higher odds of depressive symptoms and future depression risks, and have extensive health and economy-wide implications, resulting in many countries working towards shortening their working hours. Countries such as Belgium and Iceland have even embraced a four-day workweek, with many others following suit. While many papers have investigated the negative effects of either long working hours on mental health, there is limited existing literature on this subject on reduced working hours. Moreover, many studies are focused on Europe, and few on Asia. Thus, our study aims to fill in these research gaps and study the association of reduced weekly working hours and depression, as well as observe any heterogeneous responses by regions when weekly working hours are reduced. Utilizing longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), and China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from the years 2004 to 2019, we obtained 83,991 observations across 27,940 unique individuals from 21 countries. We used difference-in-differences with fixed effects to test the association of working hours with depression. Our results suggest that a reduction in weekly work hours does not have a statistically significant association with mental health of workers. We also observe heterogeneity across Europe and Asia when individuals’ actual working hours exceed the normal weekly working hours outside the one standard deviation range.