Working and Living Conditions and Psychological Distress in Latino Migrant Day Laborers

Background

Latino migrant day laborers (LMDL) work in the informal economy exchanging labor for cash payment, most often in the housing construction industry.  Harsh working conditions are characterized by underemployment and frequent unemployment resulting in impoverished living condition.

This study examines the relationship between working conditions, living conditions and psychological distress in LMDLs. The over-riding research question is how much psychological distress is explained by working conditions as well as living conditions?

Methods

A cross-sectional survey of 344 male LMDLs in the San Francisco Bay Area was conducted over a 6-month period in 2014. The sample is over 90% undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America with average weekly earnings of $232 or hourly earnings of $5.84 when taking into account wait time.  Two-thirds share apartments while the remaining reported homeless.

Working condition measures hourly earnings factoring in time waiting at work sites to be hired. Living conditions capture types of housing, crowdedness, and safety. Psychological distress outcomes include i) desesperación, which is a popular Latino idiom of psychological distress, ii) anxiety, iii) depression, and iv) Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) score.

To link poor working and living condition with psychological distress outcomes, the present study uses saturated path models. Correlations and regression parameters are estimated simultaneously and thereby control for the presence of each other. We check consistencies of the results with linear regression models.

Results

Results reveal and inverse relation between working conditions and the cultural idiom of distress desesperación.  That is, a one unit ($/hour) decrease in working condition is associated with a 0.03 unite increase in desesperación (Standardized Coefficient (SC) 1≤ß≤1: 0.19), and 0.02 higher depression (SC: 0.15), but no increase in depression and alcohol consumption.

Results also reveal that living conditions mitigate the relationship between working conditions and desesperación.  That is, when living conditions is added as an independent variable, working conditions is related to an estimated 0.02 (SC -0.14) decrease of desesperación. However, increases in quality of living conditions are related to reductions in all outcome variables, including depression (-7.09, SC-0.36), desesperación(-6.18, SC -0.32), anxiety (SC-0.19) and alcohol use (SC: -0.17).

Implications

Harsh working conditions are primarily related to culturally relevant psychological form of distress, desesperación or frustration resulting from poverty and limited ability to support families back home. Living conditions explains larger variations of depression outcomes, with an implication for screening and intervening at the individual level. Mitigating harsh working and living conditions requires macro-level interventions such as work authorization.