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Project

FWO Outgoing [PEGASUS]² Marie Sklodowska - Curie Fellowship partner agreement Deborah De Moortel - Hours and skill-underemployment in Europe: consequences for mental well-being and the role of the economic and institutional context (FWOTM845)

The proposed project aims to make an in-depth study of the links between underemployment and mental well-being. Underemployment is an emerging and underestimated problem in many European countries. Both skill underemployment (jobs requiring a lower educational level than the worker’s education) and hours underemployment (part-time hours while preferring full-time work) are considered in the proposed study. Both kinds of underemployment constitute stressful economic and psychosocial experiences. Therefore, it is hypothesised that they are associatedwith poor mental well-being. I will investigate the relationship with mental well-being and explore the underlying pathways at play.The proposed research consists of two main sub-tasks. First, causal links at the individual level will be scrutinized using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Questions regarding the direction of causality, cognitive and behavioral adjustments and dose-response relationships will be investigated. In a second phase, I will investigate the mediating/moderating influence ofcountry-level economic and institutional factors. I hypothesize that, among others, unemployment rates, labour market institutionalization and active and passive labour market policies will have an impact on the prevalence and mental well-being consequences of underemployment. For the second purpose the 2010 and 2015 editions of the European Working Conditions Survey will be used.
Date:1 Jun 2017 →  31 May 2021
Keywords:Underemployment
Disciplines:Social work not elsewhere classified