The influence of income and working time of rural migrant workers on health: The mediating effect of life stress and the moderating effect of marital status

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

The health problems of rural migrant workers have received more and more attention from government, society, and academia in recent years.

OBJECTIVE:

By integrating social role theory and interpersonal relationship theory, this study investigates the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions that explain the effects of income and working time on the health of rural migrant workers.

METHODS:

Data from 310 rural migrant workers in four cities of Hebei Province were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

RESULTS:

Results show that (1) life stress mediated the influence of income and working time on health; (2) marital status moderated the relationship between two independent variables (income and working time) and mediator (life stress): the relationship between income and life stress was much stronger for unmarried rural migrant workers than the married; the relationship between working time and life stress was much more significant for married rural migrant workers than the unmarried; (3) one indirect relationship (income-life stress-health) was moderated by marital status: the indirect relationship between income and health was much stronger for unmarried rural migrant workers than the married.

CONCLUSIONS:

This study provides some ideas for future research on the health problems of migrant workers.

Keywords

Rural migrant workers income working time marital status life stress health

Chunjiang Yang is a Professor at Yantai Nanshan University, Shandong, China. He obtained his Ph.D from Northeastern University in Shenyang, China. His research interest is organizational behavior and human resource management.

1 Introduction

In China, there is a special but prodigious army of migrants, called ‘rural migrant labor’ (nong min gong), which makes up China’s ‘special forces’ and ‘comparative advantage’ in its ascendancy as the ‘world’s factory’[1]. In fact, the ‘Made in China’ success story of the past four decades is the story of rural migrant workers toiling for subsistence wages to produce the lowest-priced products for domestic demand or (‘China-price’) exports to the world [2]. Rural migrant workers are not only the backbone of China’s manufacturing and service sector, but they also form the base along with other workers in Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam, India, and Indonesia — of the global supply chain [3]. However, the development of China’s industrialization and urbanization is far beyond typical paradigms: the Dickensian story of industrialization or the Lewisian rural-urban transition [4]. Along with China’s pro-market reforms and ‘opening-up’, a unique system of discrimination and exclusion based on the hukou (household-registration) system was promoted [5]. The rural migrant workers have very limited access to benefits such as social welfare, labor security, health insurance, public education of their children and housing subsidies that are available for registered urban residents as they lack a local ‘hukou’ status [6]. China’s massive numbers of migrant workers were already socially, economically and legally marginalized. They are facing low income, high workload, high life pressure, lack of labor protection and serious occupational diseases. According to the latest data from the national bureau of statistics, the total number of migrant workers in China has reached nearly 280 million, an increase of 1.3% over last year [7]. Thus, rural migrant workers have long been identified as a particularly vulnerable group of Chinese society and deserve wide attention from society and scholars.

Specifically, health and sufficient physical strength is the foundation of migrant workers’ life and economic income. On the one hand, most of them take up low-wage 3D (dirty, dangerous and demanding) jobs that urban people eschew, work long hours to increase their income, expose to workplace hazardous factors. On the other hand, once migrant workers get sick, their whole family often becomes poor or back to poverty due to illness. Overall, the health problem is the most important issue concerning the life and work of migrant workers. The existing literature mainly analyzes the topic of migrant workers’ health from the perspectives of gender, psychology, education, social capital, and social and economic status. Daly et al. (2019) found that workplace psychosocial stressors including high job demand, low job control, and low job security were associated with a higher probability of mental health problems of migrant workers [8]. Zhong et al. (2017) found that common mental health problems were prevalent among migrant workers, and they were associated with lots of socio-demographic and migration-related characteristics [9]. Yang et al. (2018) found that discussed the impact of social capital on the health of migrant works [10].

Indeed, it is difficult for management departments to intervene and control such factors as heredity and individual characteristics. However, it is obviously more feasible and effective to strengthen the supervision and management of working treatment and time. In addition, income basically decides an individual’s social class, network relations, and social capital. Similarly, working time also affects people’s interpersonal interactions and social communication. Therefore, it is important and feasible to focus on income and working time to discuss their influence on the health of migrant workers. Prior studies in the health area provide empirical evidence of the effects of income and time on individual health [11 –13]. However, further research is needed regarding the specific mechanisms by which these effects occur, and the boundary conditions under which income and working time influence migrant workers’ health. Therefore, this research aims to provide new insights into why and under what circumstances income and working time tell on the health of migrant workers, in the context of the Chinese. In response to these calls for further research, this study draws on social role theory and interpersonal relationship theory to explore the mediating role of life stress and the moderating effect of marital status.

This study provides several contributions to the academic literature and managerial practice. First, we analyze the influence of income and working time on the health of rural migrant workers in China. Second, it responds to calls for more research examining the intervening mechanisms that explain how income and working time might affect migrant workers’ health. In particular, it investigates the mediating effects of psychological mechanism: perceived life stress. Third, as recently noted by Lu et al. (2018, p. 187), “in current organizational and management research, one of the main missions is to delineate boundary conditions of a certain theory or studied phenomenon” [14]. Previous research has emphasized the importance of marital status [15 –17]. However, to our knowledge, no previous studies have investigated whether marital status amplifies or buffers the effects of income and working time. Therefore, by examining the moderating role of marital status, this research enriches our understanding of the conditions under which income and working time influence migrant workers’ health. Finally, the results of this study are significant especially for government policymaking about the rural migrant workers.

2 Literature review and hypotheses development

2.1 The mediating effect of life stress

Health not only means that people are physically free of disease, but also requires a mental health, social adaptation, and behavioral ethics. Health is influenced by many subjective and objective factors, such as heredity, environment, economic income, concept, and mentality [18]. Economic income has a significant impact on people’s health, especially low-income people [19]. For low-income people, increasing income can not only improve the nutritional status and living conditions, purchase the necessary medical security, but also enhance body health and reduce the risk of disease by increasing health investment (such as fitness and recreation), health knowledge and other advanced conditions [20]. Studies by Grossman (1972) [21] and Preston (1975) [22] et al. showed that personal health improves as income level rises. Surveys on migrant workers in China also found that income positively affected their health level [23]. In addition to being influenced by objective factors such as heredity and income, health is also influenced by subjective cognition and social factors such as personal concept, consumption structure, and interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication not only can meet people’s social needs such as belonging and identification but also is an important channel for people to relieve pressure and seek support [24]. Working for a long time will not only increase the workload and pressure of migrant workers, but also squeeze the social time of migrant workers, making them lack of social belonging, making it difficult to integrate into urban life and relieve the pressure, which is not conducive to physical and mental health [25].

According to the social role theory, we expect that life stress may play a key mediating role in the influence of income on health. The social role theory holds that people’s role and status in society stipulate their behaviors, and the changes in social roles and status affect people’s adaptation and then people feel stressed. Once the change of role objectively requires people to adapt to it, people will have a specific stress response [26], and long-term accumulated pressure will cause different degrees of damage to health [27]. Income, as one of the main influencing factors of social status, changes the social roles of “farmers” and “migrant workers”. From the perspective of economic sources, most migrant workers are forced to engage in low-value-added labor due to lack of knowledge and skills, and their incomes are often low. On one hand, although their incomes in urban areas have increased compared with those in rural areas, the increase is limited and it is still difficult for them to live a prosperous life. On the other hand, the social groups they contact have changed a lot, from farmers to urban residents. In contrast to the income of the surrounding groups, there will be a large psychological gap. In rural areas, housing, and land are owned, and there is less expenditure on children’s education and daily necessities, so the cost of living is lower. However, after entering the city, they will not only have to rent or buy houses, and purchase basic necessities such as clothes, food, housing and transportation, but also have to face higher expenses for their children’s education, which will substantially increase the cost of living. Under the dual effects of low income and high expense, the actual living conditions of migrant workers in cities can hardly be significantly improved, and the life stress they bear is greater. In addition, in the interactions and comparison with urban residents, migrant workers may also be discriminated against because of their low-income level, and cannot equally engage in social communication and enjoy social services, which adds additional social-psychological pressure. If these psychological stress cannot be effectively relieved, the body will be under stress for a long time, which will damage the physical and mental health. Previous studies have shown that income will affect people’s sense of pressure [28 –30], and various kinds of urban life stress will influence the health of migrant workers [31]. Studies conducted by Mino (1999) [32] and Bultmann (2002) [33] also found that life stress is an important pathogenic factor of psychological disorders. A large number of medical studies show that long-term mental tension, psychological stress, and negative emotions will cause psychological disorders and loss of control, which is not conducive to health [34 –36]. Based on the above analysis, we hypothesize as follows:

H1a: The perception of life stress mediates the relationship between income and health.

According to the theory of workload and interpersonal relationship, we expect that the life stress perceived by migrant workers will also play a key mediating role in the influence of working time on health. From the individual impact of working time, long working time will keep migrant workers in high-intensity and fast-paced production labor for a long time, increasing workload and pressure. The health of migrant workers who are under high stress for a long time will be impaired. As early as the beginning 19th century, the dangers of working overtime to the health of workers and their families were widely known. Stolzenberg (2001) showed that working time was negatively correlated with health [37]. Li zhenzhen et al. (2010) also showed that the working time of migrant workers had a significant negative influence on their health [38]. From the social impact of working time, first, after meeting the needs of survival and safety, migrant workers will then pursue social needs such as identity, belonging and interpersonal interaction. And undoubtedly, too long working time reduces their time and opportunities for social interaction, making social needs difficult to meet and thus they are depressed. Secondly, due to the lack of time for social communication with the outside world, their social circle is often confined to the scope of fellow villagers and workers, which hinders the process of integration into the city. Therefore, it is not easy to obtain effective social security and support, and it is difficult to solve stressful events through the social support system. Finally, interpersonal communication can broaden people’s perspective of understanding events and improve their mentality of experiencing events, reducing the negative effects of stressful events [39, 40]. Ma xiuying et al. (2013) found that the increase of working time will hinder the urbanization process of migrant workers and increase their negative perception of stressful events [41]. Failure to relieve life stress will seriously affect people’s health [42]. In a word, too long working time may make migrant workers feel the life stress in many aspects, such as personal work and social needs and interpersonal communication, which in turn influences their health level. Therefore, we hypothesize as follows:

H1b: The perception of life stress mediates the relationship between working time and health.

2.2 The moderating effect of marital status

Marriage is not only the legal status of husband and wife, a combination of men and women and a common life but also the psychological comfort of both sides. As George B.S. puts it, “The home is the only place in the world that hides human defects and failures, and it also contains sweet love.” Psychological studies have found that family and marriage play a role in obtaining social support, promoting healthy life behaviors, relieving psychological stress and maintaining mental health [43, 44]. Rahman (1993) found that people with married families had lower mortality rates than singles [45].

From the view of alleviating life stress, this study believes that marital status moderated the influence of migrant workers’ income on life stress. Marriage means not only a change in individual lifestyles but also a redistribution of economic resources.

Migrant workers’ families earn their income mainly by engaging in individual businesses or working as workers. Both men and women usually participate in labor, which increases the family’s overall income. This will ease the urgency of migrant families on economic income to a certain extent. In addition, family life can not only satisfy people’s needs of belonging and being loved but also enable individuals to experience and understand stress events more actively and openly and reduce negative perception of stress events. Furthermore, it also enables couples to support and comfort each other, alleviate the negative impact of economic pressure. Based on the above discussion, we hypothesize as follows:

H2a: Marital status moderates the negative relationship between income and life stress. Specifically, this relationship is weaker for married migrant workers and stronger for unmarried migrant workers.

In this study, hypothesis H1a and H1b proposed the mediating effect of life stress on the influence of income and working time on health, and hypothesis H2a and H2b proposed the moderating effect of marital status on the influence of income and working time. Integrating these two hypotheses we believe that marital status not only moderates the influence of income and working time on life stress but also moderates the mediating effect of life stress. Family and marriage will have an important impact on individual cognition and evaluation, enabling people to better deal with negative emotions and mental tension, which has a certain buffer on life stress [46, 47]. Marriage and family can alleviate and weaken the negative impact of low income and long working time on the psychology of migrant workers, and thus reduce the damage to physical and mental health. For migrant workers, low income will limit their expenditure on health care and medical security, which is harmful to their health. Too long working time will weaken their concern for their health care and leisure, causing excessive fatigue. In turn, it is detrimental to health. Compared with married people, unmarried migrant workers will experience greater life stress and a stronger negative influence on health due to the lack of buffer effect of marriage on a low income. Unmarried people are generally younger, with less family burdens, lack of nutrition and medical security, and have a high workload, which makes their direct negative impact on health perception relatively weak. Based on the above derivation and hypothesis, we hypothesize as follows:

H3a: Migrant workers’ marital status can moderate the mediating effect of life stress on the relationship between income and health. Specifically, the mediating effect will be more significant for unmarried migrant workers than the married.

H3b: Migrant workers’ marital status can moderate the mediating effect of life stress on the relationship between working time and health. Specifically, the mediating effect will be more significant for married migrant workers than the unmarried.

3 Methodology

3.1 Procedure and sample

The sample for this study came from four cities of China, including Qinhuangdao, Tangshan, Baoding, and Shijiazhuang. Considering the response rate of the questionnaire, we selected the rural migrant workers from traditional manufacturing, maintenance, catering and service industries. The research’s objectives, procedures, rules and matters needing attention of the questionnaire were all explained to each participant in detail. We distributed gifts to encourage migrant workers to participate in the survey. A total of 362 questionnaires were distributed. After deleting the invalid questionnaires, 310 valid questionnaires were obtained with 86.11% response rate. Among the rural migrant workers surveyed in the study, 64.8% of them were males. 43.2% of them were 21–30 years old, 22.3% of them 31–40 years old, and 28.4% of them were over 40 years old. In terms of marital status, 77.1% of them were married. In terms of education, 19.7% of them have primary school education and 57.4% of them have middle school education. In terms of work tenure, 33.9% of them had less than 1-year work tenure and the range of work tenure were 31.6% from 1 to 3 years.

3.2 Measures

The questionnaire consists of two parts. One is migrant workers’ demographic variables, including age, gender, occupation, marital status, etc., and the second is the data collection of variables such as income, working time, life stress and health perception.

Income is the actual monthly income value of the participant. Working time is the number of hours of work per week, which is the product of the number of working days per week and the number of working hours per day. There are two questions in health perception measurement: “How do you think of your current health status compared with your peers” and “How about your health before you go out to work, compared with your peers”. The difference between them is taken as the change of your health during the period of employment.

To measure life stress, we used the scale developed by Peili Li (2010) [48], including7 items (for example, “children’s education cost is too high to bear”, “unaffordable burden for supporting the elderly”, etc.). Items are on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (disagree) to 5 (agree).

4 Data analysis and results

4.1 Reliability analysis

Life stress, as a latent variable, needs to calculate the consistency reliability in the theoretical model. Cronbach’s α value of life stress is 0.882. Using MPLUS7.0 statistical software, the confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the structural validity of life stress. Every standardized loading falls within the range of 0.641–0.813. The fitting indexes of the measurement model also reached the optimal level (Hair, 1998 [49]) (χ² = 36.641, df = 14, CFI = 0.978, TLI = 0.967, RMSEA = 0.072). The AVE value of the scale was 0.51, indicating that the discriminant validity was good.

4.2 Descriptive statistics

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics, reliabilities, and correlations for the studied variables. The bivariate Pearson correlation coefficients (critical values) appear to be congruent with the proposed hypotheses. Income correlates negatively with life stress (γ= –0.373, P < 0.01) and positively related to health (γ= 0.260, P < 0.01). Working time was positively correlated with life stress (γ= 0.483, P < 0.01). Working time was negatively correlated with health (γ= –0.289, P < 0.01). Life stress was negatively correlated with health (γ= –0.632, P < 0.01).

Table 1
Mean, standard and correlation coefficients between variables

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6

Age

Gender –0.10

Income –0.151 –0.329

Working time –0.06 0.038 –0.165

Life stress 0.054 0.044 –0.373 0.483 0.51

Health –0.019 –0.018 0.260 –0.289 –0.632

Mean 34.10 1.35 1910.69 63.70 3.02 4.40

SD 10.96 0.48 782.96 13.64 1.22 1.12

Variables	1	2	3	4	5	6
Age
Gender	–0.10
Income	–0.151**	–0.329**
Working time	–0.06	0.038	–0.165**
Life stress	0.054	0.044	–0.373**	0.483**	0.51
Health	–0.019	–0.018	0.260**	–0.289**	–0.632**
Mean	34.10	1.35	1910.69	63.70	3.02	4.40
SD	10.96	0.48	782.96	13.64	1.22	1.12

Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; The AVE value is reported along the diagonal.

5 Hypotheses testing

5.1 Mediating effects testing

The present study presented a moderated mediation model (see Fig. 1). We conducted a structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypotheses, and the standardized value of the path coefficients and its significance level are summarized in Fig. 1. The theoretical model demonstrates an acceptable overall model fit (χ² = 52.213, df = 25, CFI = 0.978, TLI = 0.967).

Fig.1

Path coefficient. Note: standardized path coefficients are reported (two-tailed test).

Hypothesis 1a states that life stress mediates the relationship between income and health. As Fig. 1 indicates, the direct link between income and health was statistically significant (β= 0.156, p < 0.05). Income was significantly negative related to life stress (β= –0.324, p < 0.01). Life stress was significantly negative related to health (β= –0.150, p < 0.05). Moreover, we used bootstrapping approach to calculate the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for testing the mediating effect of life stress. The bootstrap approach is a more robust strategy than the causal step procedure for small samples for assessing indirect effects and a useful method for avoiding power problems relating to non-normal sampling of the indirect effect [50 –53]. As shown in Table 2, income has a negative effect on health through life stress (β= –0.049), and the 95% confidence intervals do not include zero ([–0.089, –0. 008]). Moreover, income has a statistically significant impact on health after controlling for the influence of life stress. The 95% confidence intervals do not include zero ([–0.105, –0. 028]). Thus, Hypothesis 1a was supported.

Table 2

The results of bootstrap procedure

Path	Bootstrap procedure of income-health mediating effect	Bootstrap procedure of working time-health mediating effect
95% confidence interval	LL95% CI-UL95% CI	LL95% CI-UL95% CI
Direct effect	(–0.105, –0.028)	(–0.032, –0.067)
Indirect effect	(–0.089, –0.008)	(0.013, 0.129)

Hypothesis 1b proposes that life stress mediates the relationship between working time and health. As Fig. 1 indicates, although the direct link between working time and health was not statistically significant (β= –0.045, ns), working time was significantly positive related to life stress (β= 0.475, p < 0.01). In addition, as shown in Table 2, the mediating effect of life stress was β= –0.049, and the 95% confidence intervals do not include zero ([0.013, 0.129]). Moreover, income has a statistically significant impact on health after controlling for the influence of life stress. The 95% confidence intervals do not include zero ([–0.032, –0. 067]). Therefore, the results provide support for hypothesis 1b such that life stress mediates the relationship between working time and health.

5.2 Moderating effect testing

Marital status is a nominal variable, thus, the participants were divided into married and unmarried. We test the moderating effect of marital status through group comparisons. The moderation model demonstrates an acceptable overall model fit (χ² = 104.763, df = 56, CFI = 0.958, TLI = 0.947). Hypothesis 2a states that marital status moderates the relationship between income and life stress. As shown in Fig. 2, in terms of unmarried migrant workers, income is significantly negative related to life stress (β= –0.674, p < 0.01). In terms of married migrant workers, income is significantly negative related to life stress (β= –0.259, p < 0.01). The difference in the effect of income on life stress was significant between married migrant workers and unmarried migrant workers (β= –0.380, p < 0.01), indicating that marital status moderates the relationship between income and life stress. Thus, the hypothesis H2a is supported. Hypothesis 2b postulates that marital status moderates the relationship between working time and life stress. As shown in Fig. 3, in terms of unmarried migrant workers, working time is significantly positive related to life stress (β= 0.515, p < 0.01).

Fig.2

The moderating effect of marital status on the relationship between income and life stress.

Fig.3

The moderating effect of marital status on the relationship between working time and life stress.

In terms of married migrant workers, working time is significantly positive related to life stress (β= 0.236, p < 0.01). The difference of the effect of working time on life stress was significant between married migrant workers and unmarried migrant workers (β= –0.251, p < 0.01), indicating that marital status moderates the relationship between working time and life stress. Thus, the hypothesis H2b is supported.

5.3 Moderated mediating effect testing

H3a and H3b were tested using the moderated mediation test procedure of Edwards and Lamber [54]. Complete moderated mediation analysis results are reported in Table 3. As shown in Table 3, the indirect effect of income on health is more significant among unmarried migrant workers (β= 0.767, p < 0.01) than married migrant workers (β= 0.213, p < 0.01), and their difference has reached a significant level (β= 0.555, p < 0.01). Thus, Hypothesis H3a is supported. Similarly, the indirect effect of working time on health is significant among married migrant workers (β= –0.432, p < 0.01), while the indirect effect of working time on health is not significant among unmarried migrant workers (β= –0.249, ns). Their difference does not reach a significant level (β= 0.183, ns). Thus, Hypothesis H3b is not supported.

Table 3
Analysis of moderated mediation model of health

Grouping statistics Stage Effect

First stage Second stage Direct effect Indirect effect Total effect

Income (X) → Life stress (M) → Health (Y)

Unmarried –0.674 –0.919 –0.311 0.767** 0.382*

Married –0.253 –0.744 0.002 0.213 0.215

The differences between groups –0.375** –0.339 –0.388 0.555* 0.167*

Working time(X) → Life stresss(M) → Health(Y)

Unmarried 0.235* –0.919 0.015 –0.249 –0.232

Married 0.515 –0.744** 0.127* –0.432 –0.288

The differences between groups –0.267* 0.339 –0.126 0.183 0.057

Grouping statistics	Stage	Effect
	Income (X) → Life stress (M) → Health (Y)
Unmarried	–0.674**	–0.919**	–0.311	0.767**	0.382*
Married	–0.253**	–0.744**	0.002	0.213**	0.215**
The differences between groups	–0.375**	–0.339	–0.388	0.555*	0.167*
	Working time(X) → Life stresss(M) → Health(Y)
Unmarried	0.235*	–0.919**	0.015	–0.249	–0.232
Married	0.515**	–0.744**	0.127*	–0.432**	–0.288**
The differences between groups	–0.267*	0.339	–0.126	0.183	0.057

Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.

6 Discussion

The present study advanced the research of government and organization management by exploring the effect of income and working time on health, and the mechanism of life stress and boundary condition of marital status in such relationships. As hypothesized, this paper found that life stress mediated the influence of income and working time on health. Additionally, marital status moderated the influence of income and working time on life stress. Furthermore, marital status moderated the mediating effect of life stress on the health of rural migrant workers.

Health, especially the health of migrant workers, as an important topic, has received the foreign researcher’s attention. First, Zhong et al. (2017) found that the prevalence of common mental health problems was 34.4% among Chinese migrant workers [9], which is similar to that reported among Latin American migrants of Australia (32.6% ) [55], among Romanian migrants of Spain (39.5% ) [56] and among rural-to-urban migrants of Peru (38.0% ) [57]. Similarly, we found that Chinese rural migrant workers faced health problems along with international migrants in our study. Second, Hero et al. (2017) found that high-income individuals were generally more positive about their health and health care in thirty-two middle and high-income countries (e.g., US, Japan, German, and Turkey) [58]. In line with that, we found that income positively influences the health of Chinese migrant workers, and the effect was mediated by their life stress. Third, empirical research has demonstrated that married people experience a range of physical and mental health benefits and greater functionality, self-rated health, and longevity as compared to non-married individuals [59]. However, unlike previous studies, this paper explains the moderating effect of marital status in the relationship between income and working time and health rather than its direct effects on health. Marriage may offer economic, social, and psychological benefits including access to sufficient economic resources, social control of behaviors by one’s spouse, or a sense of social support within the marital relationship. Thus, marriage buffers the negative effect of income and working time on life stress and perceived health. Overall, on the one hand, we compared our findings with other international findings, which supports the external validity of the SEM’s results. On the other hand, we highlighted differences from previous studies in the comparison, which supported our special contribution.

7 Theoretical implications

This research contributes to the literature and practice in several ways. First, based on the comparison between the study’s findings and other international findings, we conclude that the health of migrant workers is an important and serious social problem worldwide. Specially, we focus on the antecedents, mechanisms, and boundary conditions of migrant workers’ health. A healthy body is the basis of individual survival and development. As an important human capital, health is a prerequisite to obtaining other capital. Some studies have pointed out that income and health can form a cycle. The increase in income can enable them to better enjoy health care and improve their health. A healthy body and mind can guarantee their hard work, create greater value and gain more income [60]. Maintaining health requires not only economic investment, but also a time investment. Based on the characteristics of health, we took income and working time as predictors of health on the basis of previous studies, and constructed the relationship between income and working time and health.

Second, in response to calls for more research into the different influence processes involved in income and working time, this study explores the underlying mechanisms that link income and working time and health among rural migrant workers. Drawing on the theory of social role and interpersonal relationship, our study proposed a psychological mediator of income and working time on health: life stress. For migrant workers, on the one hand, they can only engage in low value-added jobs due to lack of knowledge and skills. Low income and high living costs after entering the city bring them greater life stress, and the long-term accumulated life stress lays hidden dangers for their health. On the other hand, work overtime is a common phenomenon among migrant workers. The increase in working time deprives them of opportunities to participate in social interaction, which makes it difficult for them to obtain social security and support and further increases their perception of stress, damaging their health. Life stress as a mediator variable reflects the mechanism of influence of income and working time on health.

Third, few studies have investigated the potential the boundary conditions that qualify the relationship between income and working time and life stress. Although previous research has underlined the importance of marital status, to the best of our knowledge researchers have not yet explored the moderating role of marital status on the relationship between income and working time and these variables. The results show that marital status significantly moderates the relationship between “income - life stress” and “working time - life stress”. The relationship between income and life stress is much more significant for unmarried migrant workers, while the relationship between working time and life stress is much more significant for married migrant workers than the unmarried. As a variable representing individual family responsibilities and conditions, marital status will affect the urgency of migrant workers to increase income and shorten working time. Since unmarried migrant workers work alone and lack family support, they are more eager to increase their income, which can reduce their perception of life stress. Family support can relieve stress, especially for married migrant workers, so they prefer to reduce working time. When testing the moderating effect of marital status on the indirect effects of income and working time on health, we found that marital status significantly moderates the indirect effect between income and health-an indirect effect that is even more significant for unmarried migrant workers. Marriage and family can alleviate the negative impact of low income on migrant workers. Compared with married migrant workers, unmarried migrant workers lack the buffer effect of marriage and family on the negative influence, so low income will produce greater life stress and have a stronger negative influence on health.

8 Practical implications

This study provides several managerial implications. The results of this study show that increasing income and reducing working hours play a crucial role in promoting the health of migrant workers. The increase of income can encourage migrant workers to invest in health and better enjoy medical and health services. The increase in leisure time provides them with more opportunities to participate in social interaction and communication with their families, which helps them to obtain social support and thus improves their health. The results of this study provide some ideas for improving the health problems of migrant workers: (1) improve the ability of migrant workers to increase their income. In recent years, the working conditions and treatment of migrant workers have been improved to some extent, but compared with urban workers, there is still a large gap [41]. Enterprises should appropriately raise their income levels, and at the same time strengthen supervision over the payment process to prevent wage arrears and withholding of wages. Given the lack of knowledge and skills of migrant workers, companies can increase their chances of getting higher salaries through knowledge and skills training. (2) Strengthen supervision and shorten working hours. Enterprises should strictly abide by the relevant laws such as labor law and reasonably arrange the working time of workers. Even if they are allowed to work overtime within the prescribed scope, they should be compensated for overtime work. (3) Promoting community construction in areas where migrant workers live in compact communities. The government should play a good role in this process. On the one hand, it should regularly hold cultural activities in the communities where migrant workers live, encourages migrant workers to actively participate, promotes urban integration of migrant workers through cultural identity, and then enables them to gain social support. On the other hand, government can help unmarried migrant workers set up families, relieve life stress, and get emotional comfort and support.

9 Strengths, limitations, and future directions

This study selects migrant workers as the research object and discusses the effect of income and working time on health including the mediating effect of life stress and the moderating effect of marriage. Previous studies have mostly discussed the direct effects of income and working time on the health of migrant workers, while rarely involve the mechanism of action and boundary conditions in such relationship. Although the current research has a variety of strengths, some limitations and directions for future research are worth noting.

First, limited by human, material, financial resources and other factors, the survey scope of this study is limited to four cities in the province Hebei of China. The present study adopted the convenience sampling method to collect data rather than the random sampling. Due to the convenience sample may not be enough to represent the whole migrant workers, the findings of this study may just to some extent apply to the other population. Future research can use additional samples to investigate the validity and transportability of our findings. Second, this study examined the mediating effect of life stress. However, life stress, as the only mediating factor, could not fully reflect the underlying mechanism in the relationship between income and working time and health. Finally, future research should find other underlying mechanisms that can reveal the influence process of income and working time on health based on other explanatory theories. Obviously, no study can cover all possible moderators, mediators or control for every likely antecedent to the dependent variables. This current work would be complemented with further exploration of potential moderators and mediators.

10 Conclusion

Drawing from social role theory and interpersonal relationship theory, we examined models linking income and working time to health that included life stress as a mediator and marital status as a moderator. Health, as the basic condition for the survival and development of migrant workers, is very crucial. We offer glimpses into the mechanisms by which income and working time manifest themselves in health outcomes and the boundary conditions surrounding its effectiveness. This study provides some ideas for future research on the health problems of migrant workers. Governments and enterprises should play an important role in improving the health of migrant workers. They should not only formulate relevant policies to increase the income of migrant workers but also rationally arrange the working time of migrant workers and let workers have more time to participate in social activities, which have an important impact on improving the health of migrant workers.

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