Suchergebnisse

Background: International comparisons of the disability employment gap are an important driver of policy change. However, previous comparisons have used the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), despite known comparability issues. We present new results from the higher-quality European Social Survey (ESS), compare these to EU-SILC and the EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), and also examine trends in the disability employment gap in Europe over the financial crisis for the first time. Methods: For cross-sectional comparisons of 25 countries, we use micro-data for ESS and EU-SILC for 2012 and compare these to published EU-LFS 2011 estimates. For trend analyses, we use seven biannual waves of ESS (2002-2014) with a total sample size of 182,195, and annual waves of EU-SILC (2004-2014) with a total sample size of 2,412,791. Results: (i) Cross-sectional: countries that have smaller disability employment gaps in one survey tend to have smaller gaps in the other surveys. Nevertheless, there are some countries that perform badly on the lower-quality surveys but better in the higher-quality ESS. (ii) Trends: the disability employment gap appears to have declined in ESS by 4.9%, while no trend is observed in EU-SILC - but this has come alongside a rise in disability in ESS. Conclusions: There is a need for investment in disability measures that are more comparable over time/space. Nevertheless, it is clear to policymakers there are some countries that do consistently well across surveys and measures (Switzerland), and others that do badly (Hungary).

Background: Many studies have shown that work stressors have a negative impact on health. It is therefore important to gain an understanding of how work stressors can be reduced. Recent studies have shown that employees in countries with high investments into labour market policies less often report exposure to work stressors. Although these studies are indicative of an influence of the political level on work stressors, they are based on cross-sectional cross-country analyses where causal assumptions are problematic. The aim of this study is to extend the existing evidence by longitudinally testing whether changes in labour market policies are related to changes in work stressors. Methods: We used comparative longitudinal survey data from the European Working Conditions Survey (27 countries; for the years 2005, 2010, 2015). The measurement of work stressors is based on two established work stress models: effort-reward imbalance (ERI) and job demand-control (job strain). To measure labour market policies, we used information on active (ALMP) and passive labour market policies (PLMP). After excluding persons with missing data, 64, 659 participants were eligible for the ERI and 67,114 for job strain analyses. Estimation results are provided by threeway multilevel models (individuals, country-years, country), which allow us to estimate longitudinal and cross-country macro-effects. Results: An increase in ALMP leads to a decrease of ERI. The analyses for the subcomponents 'effort' and 'reward' showed that mainly the 'reward' component is positively associated with ALMP. The association between ALMP and 'reward' shows that an increase in ALMP investments is related to an increase in rewards. Yet, no significant longitudinal associations between ALMP and job strain, and between PLMP and the work stressors, were observed. Conclusions: The study extends the current knowledge with longitudinal information by showing that an increase in ALMP is associated with an increase in rewards and a decrease of ERI. These longitudinal analyses may support a causal interpretation. The findings of this study have important policy implications. Our main result suggests that investments into ALMP can lead to better working conditions. ; This project was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation - grant number: 392132829 "LU 2211/1–1"). ; publishedVersion