Kawachi Ichiro
Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 01776, USA.
Ind Health. 2008 Oct;46(5):421-3. doi: 10.2486/indhealth.46.421.
The global integration of economies worldwide has led to increased pressure for "labor flexibility". A notable aspect of this trend has been the rise in non-standard work arrangements, which include part-time work, temporary agency-based work, fixed-term contingent work, and independent contracting. Although non-standard work arrangements are convenient for employers, they are often associated with poor pay, absence of pension and health benefits, as well as lack of protection from unions and labor laws. Studies have begun to address the question of whether these "precarious" jobs pose a health hazard for workers. The challenge for causal inference is that precarious workers are likely to differ from non-precarious workers in a variety of characteristics that also influence health outcomes, i.e. there is confounding and selection bias. However, even after taking account of these biases--through propensity score-matched analysis--there is evidence to suggest that non-standard work may be damaging to workers' health. Policies modeled after the European Union's Directive on Part-Time Work may help to mitigate some of the health hazards associated with precarious work.
全球经济一体化使得“劳动力灵活性”面临的压力增大。这一趋势的一个显著方面是非标准工作安排的增加，包括兼职工作、基于临时机构的工作、定期临时工作和独立承包工作。尽管非标准工作安排对雇主来说很方便，但它们往往与低工资、缺乏养老金和健康福利以及缺乏工会和劳动法的保护有关。研究已经开始探讨这些“不稳定”工作是否会对工人的健康造成危害。因果推断面临的挑战在于，不稳定工作的工人在各种也会影响健康结果的特征上可能与非不稳定工作的工人不同，即存在混杂和选择偏差。然而，即使通过倾向得分匹配分析考虑了这些偏差之后，仍有证据表明非标准工作可能会损害工人的健康。以欧盟《兼职工作指令》为蓝本制定的政策可能有助于减轻与不稳定工作相关的一些健康危害。
