TITLE:
Precarious Parental Employment and Use of Alcohol or Substance during COVID-19
AUTHORS:
Jake Hart, Wen-Jui Han
KEYWORDS:
Alcohol or Substance Use, COVID-19, Mental Health, Pandemic, Precarious Parental Employment
JOURNAL NAME:
Sociology Mind,
Vol.11 No.2,
April
8,
2021
ABSTRACT: As
labor markets have become increasingly volatile, more workers are susceptible
to conditions that threaten their economic security. COVID-19 has further laid
bare such economic insecurity with far-reaching implications for coping skills
and strategies. Using a cross-sectional dataset collected in May 2020 in the
United States, we examined how precarious jobs were associated with alcohol or
substance use among parents during the pandemic and if mental distress could
explain such a link. Our multivariate regression analysis confirms that holding
a job with precarious characteristics, such as feeling defenseless to
authoritarian treatment at the workplace, was significantly associated with
mental distress and doubled the probability of using alcohol or substance amid
COVID-19. And mental distress might help explain such an association. Our
analysis underscored the vulnerability faced by our workforce and how a public
health crisis magnified the dire consequences of precarious employment on risky
health behaviors.