Are flexible work arrangements associated with lower levels of chronic stress-related biomarkers? A study of 6025 employees in the UK Household Longitudinal Study

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

August 15, 2019

Summary:

Debates around the benefits of flexible work arrangements for employee well-being are limited by a lack of empirical analyses on whether flexible working enables employees with work or family stressors to cope with their levels of stress. This study examines whether the availability and use of different flexible work arrangements are associated with lower allostatic load (an index of chronic stress-related biomarkers) in a large representative study of UK adults. Male and female employees who made use of reduced hours working arrangements had lower levels of allostatic load. Among women caring for two or more children aged under 15, there was a difference of almost one unit of the allostatic load index (an additional biomarker risk) between women who used reduced hours flexible work and those without such arrangements. Reduced hours flexible work arrangements could enable women who combine work and family roles to reduce their levels of chronic stress.

Published in

Sociology

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 53 , p.779 -799

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038519826014

ISSN

380385

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Covered by over 15 media outlets

---

Related Publications

• Working mothers disproportionately more stressed, study claims

  Tarani Chandola, Cara Booker, Meena Kumari, Michaela Benzeval,

  Media - 20190130

• Full-time working mothers are 40% more stressed, study finds

  Tarani Chandola, Cara Booker, Meena Kumari, Michaela Benzeval,

  Media - 20190129

• Full-time working moms with two kids are highly stressed: study

  Tarani Chandola, Cara Booker, Meena Kumari, Michaela Benzeval,

  Media - 20190128

• Working moms 40% more stressed than women without kids: study

  Tarani Chandola, Cara Booker, Meena Kumari, Michaela Benzeval,

  Media - 20190128

• Working mothers ‘up to 40% more stressed’

  Tarani Chandola, Cara Booker, Meena Kumari, Michaela Benzeval,

  Media - 20190127

#525570