Economic Crisis, worker’s health and social protection
Résumé
Objective The aim of this paper is to analyse the individual and contextual factors
that could affect worker’s mental and physical health during economic downturn.
This paper fills the gap in the literature that addresses the link between crisis,
physical and mental health.
Methods Bivariate, machine learning method and multi-level regression analysis
were performed to explore the determinants of European Worker’s mental and
physical health. Machine learning method is dedicated to the predictors of
mental and physical health problems based on a classification algorithm,
random forest model. Since the respondents of our data come from different
European countries, the database has a hierarchical form with at least two levels
identified here. Thus, multilevel modelling is used for perfectly take account
such data structures where the level 2 effect (country) and level 1 (individuals)
are correlated.
Findings The 2008 economic crisis has had a significant impact on Europe.Our
study, based on three periods (2005,2010 and 2015), examined the relationship
between economic crisis, worker’s health and social protection. Our empirical
analysis reveals that, the mechanisms that could explain the effect of crisis on
worker’s health are: (i) the work environment, in this case, working and
employment conditions; (ii) the characteristics of individual workers, notably
gender, age, occupation, etc.; (iii) public policies such as the generosity of the
social protection system.
Conclusion The relationship between economic crisis, workers’ health and social
protection is complex and related to various factors. However, the effect of 2008
economic crisis on european workers mental health can be mitigated or
intensified by public policies. In addition, increased social spending on active
labour market programs (ALMPs) could help retain and reintegrate workers
into their jobs, thereby mitigating some adverse health effects of the economic
recession.