Associations among working hours, sleep duration, self-rated health, and health-related quality of life in Korean men
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(2020) 18:287
RESEARCH
Open Access
Associations among working hours, sleep duration, self-rated health, and healthrelated quality of life in Korean men Darae Woo1,2, Yeonjin Lee3,4*† and Sangshin Park1*†
Abstract Background: This study aimed to examine the relationship between working hours and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in men and to determine whether this relationship was mediated by sleep duration and self-rated health (SRH). Materials and methods: Our study population included 2141 working men aged 20 to 49 years old from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2016–2017. Working hours, SRH, and HRQOL were measured by a structured questionnaire survey. Sleep duration was calculated based on self-reported data. We investigated the association between working hours and HRQOL and performed a mediation analysis to evaluate the contributions of sleep duration and poor SRH to this relationship. Results: This study identified a significant association between working hours and HRQOL. Long working hours directly and indirectly affected HRQOL through poor SRH. Men who overworked were more likely to report poor HRQOL due to worsened SRH. Poor SRH was responsible for 26.3% of this relationship. But sleep duration did not explain the relationship between working hours and HRQOL. Conclusions: Working hours were directly associated with HRQOL in men. Furthermore, there was an indirect effect of working hours on HRQOL mediated by poorer SRH. An improved work-life balance is necessary to promote men’s health and quality of life. Keywords: Working hours, Health-related quality of life, Sleep duration, Self-rated health, Men
Introduction Korea has a long history of a male-dominated labor market. Korean men are responsible for their livelihood as the head of the household, and household duties are considered the primary responsibilities of women [1]. In 2018, the labor force participation rate was 73.7% in * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] † Yeonjin Lee and Sangshin Park contributed equally to this work. 3 Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong 4 School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong 1 Graduate School of Urban Public Health, University of Seoul, 163 Seoulsiripdae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 02504, Republic of Korea Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
men while 52.9% in women [2]. Many Korean firms and organizations have masculine cultures, hierarchical structures, and normative rules that value longer working hours [3]. Collective practices rooted in organizations cause Korean male workers, who are generally single bread-winners, to have longer average working hours than their counterparts in other countries [4]. Although the International Labour Organization has recommended that maximum working hours should not exceed 40 h per week [5], Korean male workers work more than 45.5 h per week on average, whereas countries in the
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