Precarious sleep? Nonstandard work, gender, and sleep disturbance in 31 European countries.

Despite the advent of precarious work, little is known about how this form of employment can generate disparities in sleep outcomes. We extend existing work by providing a theoretical framework linking different measures of work precarity to sleep problems. We argue that the association between objective precarious working conditions and sleep disturbance is channeled through and mediated by subjective work precarity. We further argue that gender moderates the relationship between objective and subjective work precarity. We test this theoretical framework using the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey. Our results indicate that objective precarious working conditions undermine sleep by promoting the subjective experience of insecurity. Furthermore, the indirect effect of objective precarious work on sleep disturbance through subjective employment insecurity varies by gender: compared to women in similar working conditions, men report higher levels of subjective precarity. This research makes important contributions to the literatures on the health consequences of nonstandard work and social determinants of well-being.

Employment Transitions, Child Care Conflict, and the Mental Health of Low-Income Urban Women With Children.

OBJECTIVE: Although studies suggest that employment promotes mental health, it is unclear whether this pattern extends to low-income urban women with children who are disproportionately employed in unstable jobs and often unable to obtain child care. In this paper, we consider whether becoming employed reduces symptoms of psychological distress among low-income women with children. We also assess whether having trouble securing adequate child care offsets these benefits. STUDY DESIGN: We use longitudinal data from the Welfare, Children, and Families project, a probability sample of low-income women with children living in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, to test whether becoming employed reduces symptoms of psychological distress over time and whether having trouble securing child care moderates this association. RESULTS: We find that employment is associated with lower levels of distress among women who have no trouble with child care and higher levels of distress among women who struggle with child care. CONCLUSION: Taken together, our results suggest that valuing the benefits of paid work over unpaid work is an oversimplification and that the emphasis on placing poor women with children into paid work could be misguided. Policies that focus on moving low-income women off of government assistance and into paid work could be more effective if greater resources were devoted to increasing access to quality child care.