Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), more than 60% of workers worldwide are precarious workers defined as temporary workers, part-time workers, or short-term workers. The proportion of precarious employment in South Korea is 32.8% (Aug. 2016). Many of these work on short-term contracts. Previous studies suggest that precarious employment workers have higher psychological morbidity (Virtanen et al., 2005), smoke more than regular workers (Jung et al., 2013), are less likely to take sick days (Kim et al., 2016), and have lower mental health status than full-time permanent employees (Richardson et al., 2012).

Previous studies usually focus on the duration of the contract to measure the impact of precarious employment on health behavior and outcomes. However, it’s possible that not only duration of employment, but also the amount of time remaining on the contract might impact the health behaviors and outcomes of precarious workers. If it does, this creates an opportunity for health policy makers to better target health interventions at precarious workers based on their remaining contract duration.

To determine the impact of remaining employment contract time on the health behaviors and outcomes of precarious workers, I plan to answer two research questions. The first question is how health behaviors and outcomes are different between regular workers and contract workers. The second question is among contract workers how the remaining contract period impacts health behavior and outcomes?

To answer these research questions, I will use the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) since it has detailed information about the contract period of current employment and the start date of current employment for 14,012 workers between 2009 and 2015. This makes it possible to calculate the remaining period of employment for contract workers. With this panel data, I will conduct descriptive analysis to answer the first research question, and a panel analysis to answer the second research question. (Korean Labor & Income Panel Study (Korean Labor & Income Panel Study