Impact of Binding Working Hours on Exercise Habits

ABSTRACT

Improvements in medical technology and sanitary conditions have led to a dramatic decrease in infectious disease-related sicknesses and deaths. Health is transitioning from a public to individual issue. However, while lifestyle-related diseases – associated with a large share of deaths and medical expenditure in Japan – are generally thought of as individual problems, it is also observed that environmental factors that cannot be easily controlled by individuals such as the working environment also play a role.

This paper treats binding working hours as an external factor that limits individual choice concerning health, and analyzes its relationship with exercise habits and exercise time. The results show that the ratio of binding working hours, the ratio of time one wishes to allocate to exercise, and whether or not one has experienced a change in body from exercise are strong factors when deciding actual exercise time.

In the past, indicators such as working time and commuting time have been discussed from the perspective of work-life balance (WLB) in terms of measures to address the falling birthrate. This paper analyzes from a different angle, illustrating that binding working hours also have an impact on exercise habits and so on. It also suggests that company efforts to improve the health of employees also have merits for the company itself, and that there is a need for frameworks that quantify these merits (for example, “health accounting”).