JOINT RESEARCH CENTER FOR PANEL STUDIES SELECTED DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES

This paper investigates whether non-regular employees are worse off with their employment status, by examining the subjective well-being measured by the mental health index based on the individual panel data drawn from the Keio Household Panel Survey (2004 through 2012). We find that the majority of non-regular employees intentionally choose their employment status, as involuntary non-regular employment accounted for 3.5% of the entire sample, and 16.0% of non-regular employment. We also find that once controlling for the individual fixed effects, the subjective well-being does not differ among employment status except for the involuntary non-regular employment. Specifically, non-regular employees are not necessarily worse off as far as they intentionally choose their employment status. If they involuntarily choose the non-regular employment, however, they tend to experience poor mental health and thus their subjective well-being would be lowered. These results imply the importance of the separation of non-regular employment into the voluntary and involuntary one. † Keio University (E-mail: yamamoto@fbc.keio.ac.jp) ‡ Keio University (E-mail: hagi09291985@z2.keio.jp) * The data analysed in this study consists of individual data drawn from the Keio Household Panel Survey (2004 through 2012). We thank Kotaro Tsuru, Fumio Ohtake, and Sachiko Kuroda for their valuable comments. Any errors remained in this paper are entirely the authors’.