IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v54y2002i5p799-810.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socio-economic gradients in psychological distress: a focus on women, social roles and work-home characteristics

Author

Listed:
  • Matthews, Sharon
  • Power, Chris

Abstract

A focus in the literature on determinants of women's health is the cost and benefit of occupying multiple roles as employee, spouse, and mother, yet little attention has been given to the work and home characteristics of different roles for women in paid and unpaid work. The impact of work-home factors on socio-economic gradients in health has also tended to be overlooked. This paper assesses the contribution of work-home factors on socio-economic differences in psychological distress among women, using data from the 1958 British birth cohort. Outcome measures include psychological distress and social class at age 33. Work-home measures include: (1) roles--employment, marital status, domestic responsibility and parental status (2) work characteristics--psychosocial job strain, insecurity, unsocial working hours, and (3) home characteristics--youngest child's age, total number of children, childcare responsibilities and having an older adult in the household (over 70 years). A social gradient in psychological distress exists: the odds ratio (OR) for classes IV and V versus. I and II was 3.02, adjusting for prior psychological distress reduces this to 2.36. Whilst, work and home factors were associated separately with distress and social class, the combined effect of work and home factors did not account for the class gradient in distress. This surprising result therefore implicates factors beyond adult social roles examined here in the development of socio-economic gradients.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthews, Sharon & Power, Chris, 2002. "Socio-economic gradients in psychological distress: a focus on women, social roles and work-home characteristics," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 799-810, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:54:y:2002:i:5:p:799-810
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(01)00110-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bonnie Janzen & Laurie-Ann Hellsten, 2021. "Household Income and Psychological Distress: Exploring Women’s Paid and Unpaid Work as Mediators," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(12), pages 1-15, June.
    2. Elovainio, Marko & Kivimäki, Mika & Ek, Ellen & Vahtera, Jussi & Honkonen, Teija & Taanila, Anja & Veijola, Juha & Järvelin, Marjo-Riitta, 2007. "The effect of pre-employment factors on job control, job strain and psychological distress: A 31-year longitudinal study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 187-199, July.
    3. Gettler, Lee T. & Oka, Rahul C., 2016. "Are testosterone levels and depression risk linked based on partnering and parenting? Evidence from a large population-representative study of U.S. men and women," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 157-167.
    4. Zunzunegui, Maria-Victoria & Alvarado, Beatriz-Eugenia & Béland, François & Vissandjee, Bilkis, 2009. "Explaining health differences between men and women in later life: A cross-city comparison in Latin America and the Caribbean," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 235-242, January.
    5. Lisa Harryson & Mattias Strandh & Anne Hammarström, 2012. "Domestic Work and Psychological Distress−What Is the Importance of Relative Socioeconomic Position and Gender Inequality in the Couple Relationship?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-7, June.
    6. Backhans, Mona C. & Lundberg, Michael & Månsdotter, Anna, 2007. "Does increased gender equality lead to a convergence of health outcomes for men and women? A study of Swedish municipalities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(9), pages 1892-1903, May.
    7. Xenia Chela-Alvarez & Oana Bulilete & M. Esther García-Buades & Victoria A. Ferrer-Perez & Joan Llobera-Canaves, 2020. "Perceived Factors of Stress and Its Outcomes among Hotel Housekeepers in the Balearic Islands: A Qualitative Approach from a Gender Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(1), pages 1-21, December.
    8. Sperlich, Stefanie & Geyer, Siegfried, 2015. "The mediating effect of effort-reward imbalance in household and family work on the relationship between education and women's health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 58-65.
    9. Stefanie Sperlich & Sonja Arnhold-Kerri & Siegfried Geyer, 2011. "What accounts for depressive symptoms among mothers? The impact of socioeconomic status, family structure and psychosocial stress," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 56(4), pages 385-396, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:54:y:2002:i:5:p:799-810. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.