Nonstandard Employment and Health in South Korea: The Role of Gender and Family Status

Using nationally representative longitudinal data collected in South Korea from 2006 to 2013, this study evaluates the associations between nonstandard employment and various health outcomes with a focus on gender differences. We also examine to what extent family status, that is, marital status and parenthood, conditions these associations for men and women. Our results reveal an important role of selection in that many of the significantly negative associations between nonstandard/self-employment and health outcomes disappear in fixed-effects models when time-invariant unobserved individual heterogeneity is taken into account. Such negative selection appears to be more pronounced for men than for women. We also find a significant association between nonstandard/self-employment and health, which differs by gender and particular health outcomes examined. As for the moderating role of family status, our results show that mothers do benefit from self-employment in terms of lower depressive symptoms.