The association between long working hours and marital status change: middle-aged and educated Korean in 2014-2015.

Background: We investigated the association between long workhours and marital status change from married to divorced or separated status that might have bad health effects.

Methods: A total of 40,654 participants with married status in 2014 were followed up in 2015. Weekly workhours were categorized into four groups: ≤ 40, 41-52, 53-60, and > 60 hours per week. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the relationship between groups of workhours and marital status change after adjusting for age, total monthly household income, working type, and depression with sex stratification.

Results: The study populations consisted of 8,346 (20.5%) females and 32,308 (79.5%) males. Odd ratios (ORs) of marital status change for females working for more than 60 hours per week was 4.26 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.25-14.5), when working less than or equal to 40 hours per week was used as reference in the crude model. ORs of working more than 60 hours per week was 4.57 (95% CI: 1.02-20.5) in female workers when considering age, total household earning per month, working type of daytime, and depression in a dose-response manner. However, for male workers, long workhours were not significantly related to change of marriage status.

Conclusions: Long workhours for more than 60 hours per week had significantly higher risk of divorce or separation in females, but not in males. Further follow-up studies are needed to evaluate long term effects of long workhours on divorce risk.