Working Time Mismatches and Self-Assessed Health of Married Couples: Evidence from Germany

Underemployment and overemployment are widespread in developed countries and have detrimental consequences on health. This article tackles the question of the relationship between health and own, spousal and cross working time mismatches in bi-active couples. Using 83,000 observations from the German SOEP (1997–2012) I demonstrate that self-assessed health is reduced in case of overemployment and underemployment. I find that living with an overemployed partner is negatively correlated with own health. However, I show that the effect of overemployment is lower for those who live with an overemployed partner. This positive cross-effect is consistent with the existence of a comparison norm effect within household. Those results are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks and mostly transit via mental health. This article concludes that overemployment does not only affect the overemployed workers but also their partner and not accounting for such spillovers leads to an underestimation of the total health costs of overemployment.