Investigating mechanisms between precarious employment and workers’ mental health. A longitudinal approach

The central aim of this project is to examine the longitudinal relationship between precarious employment and worker’s mental health. That general objective translates into two more specific objectives, both of which have been pointed out as important gaps in the academic literature. The first objective relates to better understanding the directions of causality between precarious employment (trajectories) and mental health (and disability) among salaried employees. While accounting for potential confounding factors, it aims to disentangle to what extent low-quality employment precedes adverse health outcomes, and to what extent we can talk about ‘health selection’ (i.e. ill-health influencing selection into precarious employment). The second objective is to analyse whether and how household-level material deprivation mediates the relationship between precarious employment and mental health. The project will draw on various secondary longitudinal quantitative datasets, adopt a multidimensional conceptualisation of precarious employment, and analyse.