Vulnerability to Adverse Working Conditions in EU-15 Countries: Empirical Evidence over two Decades

Workforce vulnerability has recently come to the forefront in European policy debate as countries searched for the potential engine of inclusive growth with an aim of protecting workers against adverse working conditions. This paper presents a methodology to measure vulnerability at the workplace relying on a definition of vulnerable workers as carrying the burden of working under the threat of adverse physical and psychosocial working conditions. Vulnerability is thus a forward-looking concept that allows the identification of workers who are the most exposed to work resource deprivations and more generally to ill-being at the workplace. Using a pseudo-panel derived from repeated cross-sectional data, second-order moments can be used to identify and estimate the variance of shocks on working conditions and, therefore, the probability of being exposed to adverse working conditions in the future. Estimates from the last editions of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) provide a vulnerability measure both at the cohort level and at the aggregate one, allowing comparisons across European countries.