Identifying the Relationship Between Experiences of Discrimination and Health of Young Employees in Korea

Background:Although researchers from diverse fields, including epidemiology (Borrell et al., 2007), public health (e.g., Krieger, 1999, 2012, 2014), and psychology (Williams et al., 1997), have paid increasing attention to the effect of discriminatory experiences on health, there have been few discussions from a social welfare or sociology point of view in Korea. Discrimination arises from prejudice and an unfair social structure; therefore, researchers in the social science field need to focus on the issue to prevent discrimination and intervene effectively.

Method:On that basis, this study set out to investigate the relationship between experiences of discrimination and health of young employees(from 15 to 34 years) in Korea. For this purpose, it analyzed 2014 fourth-wave data from the Korean Working Conditions Survey (KWCS) using multiple regression and logit analysis. The KWCS asked respondents whether they had been subjected to each of the ten types of discrimination (age, ethnic background, country of origin, gender, religion, disability, sexual orientation, education level, region, status of employment) at work over the past twelve months, with a yes-no answer. As the main object of this study was the experience of discrimination itself rather than its intensity, the answers were condensed into a dichotomy. In other words, the answer was coded 1 if the respondent had known at least one experience of discrimination. This was also useful for dividing the sample into a treatment group and a control group. Also, we measured two health status; subjective health and mental health. Subjective health was rated on a five Likert-scale and mental health measured whether or not respondents have anxiety/depression.  

Result:The results showed that the employment status, gender, education level, job-control, stress, satisfaction with working environment, degree of job hazard were statistically significantly related with health. More importantly, discriminatory experiences had a statistically significant negative effect on the self-reported health and anxiety/depression after controlling for confounding variables that could affect both the causal and outcome variables. This finding suggests the need for policies to prevent discrimination in the workplace and for social science researchers to embrace discrimination issues and to seek solid relevant scientific evidence.