van der Meer Peter Douwe, van Huizen Thomas, Plantenga Janneke
Utrecht University School of Economics, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Utrecht University School of Economics, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Soc Sci Med. 2025 Jan;364:117502. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117502. Epub 2024 Nov 13.
This study examines how religiousness moderates the mental health effect of job insecurity, a prevalent stressor in modern societies. We use panel data from a representative, large sample of Dutch employees from 2008 to 2018. Exploiting the longitudinal nature of the data, we control for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. Our main results indicate that job insecurity negatively affects men's but not women's mental health. Religious employees, however, are shielded from the adverse mental health effects of job insecurity. The protective effect of religiousness seems to be different for Catholics and Protestants: Protestant employees are shielded from the adverse mental health effects of job insecurity, whereas Catholic employees are not. Differences in work ethic and social network that religiousness may provide cannot explain the protective effect of religiousness. The mechanism at work appears to be a firm belief in God, as well as belief in life after death, in particular in combination with frequent attendance of religious gatherings or daily prayer. Unlike belief in God's existence, which shields only the religious, belief in life after death shields the religious and non-religious alike. The confluence of increasing job insecurity and increasing secularisation poses a risk to public mental health. Our results contribute to identifying employees who are particularly at risk and could, by shedding light on the mechanisms, suggest directions for potential preventive and curative interventions.
本研究考察了宗教信仰如何调节工作不安全感对心理健康的影响，工作不安全感是现代社会中一种普遍存在的压力源。我们使用了2008年至2018年来自荷兰员工的具有代表性的大样本面板数据。利用数据的纵向性质，我们控制了时间不变的未观察到的异质性。我们的主要结果表明，工作不安全感对男性心理健康有负面影响，但对女性没有。然而，有宗教信仰的员工能够免受工作不安全感对心理健康的不利影响。宗教信仰对天主教徒和新教徒的保护作用似乎有所不同：新教员工能够免受工作不安全感对心理健康的不利影响，而天主教员工则不能。宗教信仰可能提供的职业道德和社会网络差异无法解释宗教信仰的保护作用。起作用的机制似乎是对上帝的坚定信仰，以及对来世的信仰，特别是与频繁参加宗教集会或每日祈祷相结合时。与仅保护有宗教信仰者的对上帝存在的信仰不同，对来世的信仰对有宗教信仰者和无宗教信仰者都有保护作用。工作不安全感增加和世俗化加剧的共同作用对公众心理健康构成风险。我们的研究结果有助于识别特别有风险的员工，并通过揭示其中的机制，为潜在的预防和治疗干预措施提供方向。
