Duration of working hours: health and socio-economic Implications

Abstract

A topic of relevance for occupational therapy from their bases, has been how the person distributes the time of their activities and through this reach “Occupational Balance”, recognizing its importance to the health of the human. However, a current Chilean worker is under its own role demands, which directly threaten the scope of this balance , and therefore their health . Attributed this mainly to the large number of hours devoted to its production. This document shows a compilation of articles that seek to demonstrate the relationship between health status of individuals and the length of the workday, set those workday standards with less risk to health, and also to mention the implications that amending this can have on a country. For this, a literature review was conducted virtually, through the Library System of the Universidad de Concepción (SIBUDEC) using international platforms like Lilacs, Scielo, ProQuest and EBSCO. Well complemented by direct search for items on some electronic journals. Finally it is recognized that a working day of 8 hours per day and 45 hours per week is the most that a worker should be exposed to their work and questions whether the parameters of economic development slated to be the primary determinant for a country to take the decision to implement such measures.