Social Support, Social Ties, and Mental Health:

The increase of work-related mental health problems is a growing concern for the Netherlands. This paper contributes to the body of literature concerning the relationship between social factors and mental health by comparing self-employment with organizational employment. A major difference between the types of employment is the presence of colleagues, supervisors and an organization that is incentivized to create a productive work environment. This paper investigates the relationship between the type of employment on the hand and social support, social contacts, loneliness and mental health on the other. Due to the difference in the social work environment and by following literature stressing the positive effect of social ties and social support on mental health, I predict that self-employed workers experience less support at work, are less satisfied with their contacts, have a higher level of social loneliness and a lower level of mental health. These predictions are tested with extensive data from the Dutch LISS Panel using random and fixed effects estimators. The results provide some support for my predictions.