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The Effect of Long Working Hours and Overtime on Occupational Health: A Meta-Analysis of Evidence from 1998 to 2018.

ABSTRACT: There has been no subsequent meta-analysis examining the effects of long working hours on health or occupational health since 1997. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct a meta-analysis covering studies after 1997 for a comparison. A total of 243 published records were extracted from electronic databases. The effects were measured by five conditions, namely, physiological health (PH), mental health (MH), health behaviours (HB), related health (RH), and nonspecified health (NH). The overall odds ratio between long working hours and occupational health was 1.245 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.195-1.298). The condition of related health constituted the highest odds ratio value (1.465, 95% CI: 1.332-1.611). The potential moderators were study method, cut-point for long weekly working hours, and country of origin. Long working hours were shown to adversely affect the occupational health of workers. The management on safeguarding the occupational health of workers working long hours should be reinforced.

SUBMITTER: Wong K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6617405 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Effect of Long Working Hours and Overtime on Occupational Health: A Meta-Analysis of Evidence from 1998 to 2018.

Wong Kapo K Chan Alan H S AHS Ngan S C SC

International journal of environmental research and public health 20190613 12

There has been no subsequent meta-analysis examining the effects of long working hours on health or occupational health since 1997. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct a meta-analysis covering studies after 1997 for a comparison. A total of 243 published records were extracted from electronic databases. The effects were measured by five conditions, namely, physiological health (PH), mental health (MH), health behaviours (HB), related health (RH), and nonspecified health (NH). The overall odds ...[more]

PMID: 31200573

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Project description:ObjectiveThis study aimed to examine the association between long working hours, occupational stress, depression, and well-being, and to explore the intermediary effect of occupational stress and well-being between working hours and depression among couriers in Zhejiang, China.MethodsThe study used a cluster random sampling method to select 1,200 couriers from mainstream express companies in Zhejiang, China. The data were collected and analyzed using the Core Occupational Stress Scale (COSS) to measure occupational stress, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scale to evaluate depression, and the World Health Organization five-item Well-Being Index (WHO-5) scale to assess well-being. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypothesized relationship among the variables.ResultsThe phenomenon of long working hours (75.1%) was quite common among couriers in Zhejiang, China. Working hours had a direct positive effect on depression (β = 0.008, p < 0.001) and on occupational stress (β = 0.009, p < 0.001), and working hours had a negative effect on well-being (β = -0.013, p < 0.001). Occupational stress had a direct positive effect on depression (β = 0.272, p < 0.001), but well-being had no significant direct effect on depression. Working hours had an indirect effect on depression through the mediating effect of occupational stress while the mediating effect of well-being was not found.ConclusionLong working hours is associated with occupational stress, well-being, and depression. Our results confirmed that working hours, occupational stress, and well-being were strong predicators of depression. Working hours had a significant indirect effect on depression via occupational stress. The result of this study showed that decreasing working hours and reducing occupational stress would be effective for couriers to prevent depression. However, more studies are needed to verify the relationship between working hours and depression.

Project description:OBJECTIVES: Many studies have reported an association between overwork and hypertension. However, research on the health effects of long working hours has yielded inconclusive results. The objective of this study was to identify an association between overtime work and hypertension in wage workers 45 years and over of age using prospective data. METHODS: Wage workers in Korea aged 45 years and over were selected for inclusion in this study from among 10,254 subjects from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Workers with baseline hypertension and those with other major diseases were excluded. In the end, a total of 1,079 subjects were included. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to calculate hazard ratios and adjust for baseline characteristics such as sex, age, education, income, occupation, form of employment, body mass index, alcohol habit, smoking habit, regular exercise, and number of working days per week. Additional models were used to calculate hazard ratios after gender stratification. RESULTS: Among the 1,079 subjects, 85 workers were diagnosed with hypertension during 3974.2 person-months. The average number of working hours per week for all subjects was 47.68. The proportion of overtime workers was 61.0% (cutoff, 40 h per week). Compared with those working 40 h and less per week, the hazard ratio of subjects in the final model, which adjusted for all selected variables, working 41-50 h per week was 2.20 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.19-4.06), that of subjects working 51-60 h per week was 2.40 (95% CI, 1.07-5.39), and that of subjects working 61 h and over per week was 2.87 (95% CI, 1.33-6.20). In gender stratification models, the hazard ratio of the females tended to be higher than that of the males. CONCLUSION: As the number of working hours per week increased, the hazard ratio for diagnosis of hypertension significantly increased. This result suggests a positive association between overtime work and the risk of hypertension.

Dataset Information

The Effect of Long Working Hours and Overtime on Occupational Health: A Meta-Analysis of Evidence from 1998 to 2018.

Publications

The Effect of Long Working Hours and Overtime on Occupational Health: A Meta-Analysis of Evidence from 1998 to 2018.

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