Abstract/Summary

We investigate the relative importance of variations in job quality in accounting for variations in general well-being among employed people in Europe, the United States, Australia and South Korea. We find that the importance of job quality is everywhere of a similar magnitude to that of health, while both are far more important than other conventional determinants, including education, gender, marital status, parental status, age, or household income. Job quality accounts for somewhat more of well-being’s variation among men than among women. Within the majority of European countries, the R-squared for the variation accounted for ranges between 14 and 19 percent. The paper’s findings, alongside rising policy interest, support the allocation of a greater priority for job quality in general socio-economic and labour force surveys than hitherto.