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Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis

BACKGROUND: The pressing demands of work over the years have had a significant constraint on the family and social life of working adults. Moreover, failure to achieve a ‘balance’ between these domains of life may have an adverse effect on their health. This study investigated the relationship betwe...

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Autores principales: Mensah, Aziz, Adjei, Nicholas Kofi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32669103
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09139-w
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author Mensah, Aziz
Adjei, Nicholas Kofi
author_facet Mensah, Aziz
Adjei, Nicholas Kofi
author_sort Mensah, Aziz
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The pressing demands of work over the years have had a significant constraint on the family and social life of working adults. Moreover, failure to achieve a ‘balance’ between these domains of life may have an adverse effect on their health. This study investigated the relationship between work-life conflict and self-reported health among working adults in contemporary welfare countries in Europe. METHODS: Data from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey 2015 on 32,275 working adults from 30 countries in Europe were analysed. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine the associations between work-life balance and self-reported health among men and women. We further used a 2 stage multi-level logistic regression to assess variations in self-reported health among welfare state regimes by gender. RESULTS: The results showed a strong association between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health among working adults in Europe (aOR = 2.07; 95% CI: 1.93–2.23). However, the magnitude of the effect differed slightly by gender (men: aOR = 1.97; 95% CI: 1.78–2.18 vs women: aOR = 2.23; 95% CI: 2.01–2.47). Furthermore, we found variations in the relationship between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health between welfare states regimes. The association was found to be weaker in the Nordic and Southern welfare states than the Liberal, Conservative, and Central Eastern European welfare states. Although the associations were more consistent among men than women in the Conservative welfare states regime, we found higher associations for women than men in the Southern, Nordic, Liberal, and Central Eastern European welfare states. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence of some variations in the association between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health among men and women across welfare states regimes in Europe. The results demonstrate the need for governments, organizations and policymakers to provide conducive working conditions and social policies for working adults to deal with competing demands from work and family activities.
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spelling pubmed-73646522020-07-20 Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis Mensah, Aziz Adjei, Nicholas Kofi BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The pressing demands of work over the years have had a significant constraint on the family and social life of working adults. Moreover, failure to achieve a ‘balance’ between these domains of life may have an adverse effect on their health. This study investigated the relationship between work-life conflict and self-reported health among working adults in contemporary welfare countries in Europe. METHODS: Data from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey 2015 on 32,275 working adults from 30 countries in Europe were analysed. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine the associations between work-life balance and self-reported health among men and women. We further used a 2 stage multi-level logistic regression to assess variations in self-reported health among welfare state regimes by gender. RESULTS: The results showed a strong association between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health among working adults in Europe (aOR = 2.07; 95% CI: 1.93–2.23). However, the magnitude of the effect differed slightly by gender (men: aOR = 1.97; 95% CI: 1.78–2.18 vs women: aOR = 2.23; 95% CI: 2.01–2.47). Furthermore, we found variations in the relationship between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health between welfare states regimes. The association was found to be weaker in the Nordic and Southern welfare states than the Liberal, Conservative, and Central Eastern European welfare states. Although the associations were more consistent among men than women in the Conservative welfare states regime, we found higher associations for women than men in the Southern, Nordic, Liberal, and Central Eastern European welfare states. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence of some variations in the association between work-life conflict and poor self-reported health among men and women across welfare states regimes in Europe. The results demonstrate the need for governments, organizations and policymakers to provide conducive working conditions and social policies for working adults to deal with competing demands from work and family activities. BioMed Central 2020-07-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7364652/ /pubmed/32669103 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09139-w Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mensah, Aziz
Adjei, Nicholas Kofi
Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis
title Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis
title_full Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis
title_fullStr Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis
title_full_unstemmed Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis
title_short Work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in Europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis
title_sort work-life balance and self-reported health among working adults in europe: a gender and welfare state regime comparative analysis
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32669103
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09139-w
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