Determinants of Job Satisfaction: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

Abstract

The paper investigates the main determinants of job satisfaction based on evidence from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The job satisfaction is analyzed using cross-sectional data from Jobs, Skills and Migration Survey conducted in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in 2013. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are both lower-middle-income countries with economies mainly dependent on remittances from migrants working abroad. Today both these Central Asian countries practice higher level of external migration, and this labor outflow can be caused by lower level of job satisfaction which, in turn, induced by other factors that are needed to be determined. The main objective of this paper is to find out these determinants of job satisfaction in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Many studies have examined job satisfaction in overall by failing to take into account that job satisfaction is heterogeneous phenomenon since while people assess their job satisfaction extent, they might mean different things. Therefore, in this research we distinguish six types of job satisfaction as: job satisfaction in overall, job satisfaction in terms of work environment, job satisfaction in terms of earnings, job satisfaction in terms of hours, workload and breaks flexibility, job satisfaction in terms of working hours per day and job satisfaction in terms of social security affiliation status. To find out the main factors that significantly affect on job satisfaction of individuals working in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, ordinal logit and probit regression models are used. The findings of this research paper are estimated to be that gender, sector, working hours per week, expectation of income change, job security, health condition, paid sick leave, learning new things, and job routine have a significant relationship with job satisfaction.