Precarious Employment as a Contributor to Physical and Mental Health of California Workers

Sarah Beth Stein, California Center for Population Research UCLA
Randall Kuhn, University of California, Los Angeles

Precarious employment (PE) has been established in the literature as a key social determinant of health that is linked to multiple material-need insecurities. However, despite its growing prevalence in research and theory, the construct of PE has been operationalized differently across disciplines. Disentangling the subconstructs of PE, which range from employment insecurity to workplace vulnerability, is crucial to understanding its links to other constructs and larger sociological, economic, and health-related issues. This study uses data from a novel dataset, the California Work and Health Survey (CWHS), to describe the sociodemographic correlates of PE, explore how several subconstructs of PE are related to one another, and relate PE subconstructs to other material-need insecurities and health. Preliminary results show that nativity and ethnicity among this worker population are associated with self-rated health, and that treatment at work may partially explain the relationship between at-work breaks and freedom and self-rated health.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Health and Morbidity, Human Capital, Education, and Work

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