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Job Satisfaction and Domains of Job Satisfaction for Older Workers with Disabilities in Europe

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the levels of job satisfaction reported by older workers (aged 50–64) with and without disability by using an aggregating approach in which job satisfaction is seen as a combination of various job satisfaction domains (physical effort, time pressure, level of freedom, capability to develop new skills, support in the workplace, recognition of the work, salary, promotion prospect and job security). Using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we estimate a two-layer model based on the interrelation between the different domains of job satisfaction and wherein the individual’s overall job satisfaction depends on each of these domains. The results show that the levels of satisfaction with the recognition of the work, support in difficult situations and physical effort have a significant effect on the overall job satisfaction reported by limited disabled workers. For this group, the trade-offs between the domains recognition with work and support and satisfaction with salary are especially high. These findings can help organizations, managers and policy makers to design or modify current jobs to make them more attractive in terms of satisfaction for limited disabled older workers.

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Notes

  1. Alternatively, we have tried to estimate the Eqs. (1) and (2) distinguishing three possible European geographical areas: Scandinavian countries, Central European Countries and Mediterranean countries. However, the sample sizes are still very low in the Central Europe countries for the non-limited and limited disabled samples (125 and 93 observations, respectively) which have made such an analysis not possible.

  2. For example, see Oliver (1996) for more information on the social model of disability.

  3. In our case, we have nine domains of job satisfaction and four possible levels of satisfaction (i.e. strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree), and thus the number of dummy variables that should be included in the Eq. (1) is 27 (= 9*(4 − 1)).

  4. For example, see van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2004) for more examples of computation of trade-offs between different domains of job satisfaction.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks two anonymous reviewers and the editor for useful comments and suggestions. This paper uses data from the SHARE, which has been primarily funded by the European Commission through the 5th framework programme (project QLK6-CT-2001-00360 in the thematic programme Quality of Life), through the 6th framework programme (projects SHARE-I3, RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE, CIT5-CT-2005-028857, and SHARELIFE, CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and through the 7th framework programme (SHARE-PREP, 211909 and SHARE-LEAP, 227822). The usual disclaimer applies.

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  1. Departamento de Economía Aplicada (Hacienda Pública), University of Malaga, Plaza de El Ejido s/n, 29.071, Malaga, Spain

    Ricardo Pagán

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Correspondence to Ricardo Pagán.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6, 7.

Table 6 Domains of job satisfaction for non-limited disabled (random effects GLS using z-scores)
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Table 7 Domains of job satisfaction for limited disabled (random effects GLS using z-scores)
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Pagán, R. Job Satisfaction and Domains of Job Satisfaction for Older Workers with Disabilities in Europe. J Happiness Stud 14, 861–891 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-012-9359-x

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