A Family Affair: Job Loss and the Mental Health of Spouses and Adolescents

Bubonya, Melisa; Cobb‐Clark, Deborah A.; Wooden, Mark

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2532754

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Her findings indicate both partners to experience lower mental health after husbands redundancy. Using 11 waves of Australian HILDA data Bubonya et al (2017) examine the effect of job losses and unemployment on the mental health of the partner. Their results suggest lower mental health for women if husbands lose jobs, however, only if the husband is not re-employed, the couple already reported cash-flow stress or financial hardship in the previous period.…”

Section: On Partnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further complementary evidence on actual behavior is provided in Kunze and Suppa (2020) and suggests that public social activities of both partners decline if one of them enters unemployment (due to plant closure) whereas additional substitution with private social activities only emerges if the indirectly affected person is working neither. Bubonya et al (2017) analyze mental health (anxiety and mood disruption) of co-resident adolescents (i.e. individuals aged 15-20 years) using the HILDA.…”

Section: On Partnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unemployment and Subjective Well-Being

Suppa

2021

Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use:Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes.You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public.If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.

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Section: On Partnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: On Partnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unemployment and Subjective Well-Being

Suppa

2021

Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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“…It is a causal factor in malnutrition and growth stunting, and negatively impacts the mental health of spouses and children (Lindo 2010;Bubonya, Cobb-Clark, and Wooden 2014). Children's educational attainment, labor market outcomes, and social mobility are also negatively affected Justice.…”

Section: Impact On Children Families and Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unemployment: The Silent Epidemic

Tcherneva

2017

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in August 2017The Levy Economics Institute Working Paper Collection presents research in progress by Levy Institute scholars and conference participants. The purpose of the series is to disseminate ideas to and elicit comments from academics and professionals.Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, founded in 1986, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independently funded research organization devoted to public service. Through scholarship and economic research it generates viable, effective public policy responses to important economic problems that profoundly affect the quality of life in the United States and abroad. ABSTRACTThis paper examines two key aspects of unemployment-its propagation mechanism and socioeconomic costs. It identifies a key feature of this macroeconomic phenomenon: it behaves like a disease. A detailed assessment of the transmission mechanism and the existing pecuniary and nonpecuniary costs of unemployment suggests a fundamental shift in the policy responses to tackling joblessness. To stem the contagion effect and its outsized social and economic impact, fiscal policy can be designed around two criteria for successful disease interventionpreparedness and prevention. The paper examines how a job guarantee proposal uniquely meets those two requirements. It is a policy response whose merits include much more than its macroeconomic stabilization features, as discussed in the literature. It is, in a sense, a method of inoculation against the vile effects of unemployment. The paper discusses several preventative features of the program.

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“…There is considerable evidence that men and women differ not only in their employment behavior and mental health, but also in their mental health responses to their own employment shocks as well as to those of others around them (see Novo et al 2001;Paul and Moser 2009;Marcus 2013;Bubonya et al 2014;Norström et al 2014). Given this, there is every reason to believe that the dynamic relationship between mental and economic well-being will be gendered as well.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some researchers, for example, control for unobserved heterogeneity using individual-specific random-or fixed-effects models (Dockery 2006;Green 2011), while others attempt to rule out reverse causality by examining transitions into unemployment (Flint et al 2013;Milner et al 2014). In particular, several studies estimate the mental health consequences of unemployment that results from plant closure and mass-layoffs, which some researchers argue are exogenous shocks (Paul and Moser 2009;Chadi and Hetschko 2016), though this has been a matter of debate (Bubonya et al 2014). The results have been mixed despite a similar research methodology being adopted.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Bilateral Relationship between Depressive Symptoms and Employment Status

2017

Self Cite

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NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYMental health and employment outcomes are inherently intertwined. People with poor mental health have lower levels of economic activity, lower earnings, and less stable employment. On the other hand, employment difficulties can undermine mental health; many who struggle to find meaningful work or who lose their jobs will experience poorer mental well-being as a result. But are mental health issues a cause or consequence of poor labor market outcomes?Using nationally representative data, we estimate how transitions into and out of depressive episodes affect subsequent employment outcomes, including participation, employment and unemployment. Further, we address the potential for the reverse relationship to exist by estimating how changes in employment status affect the chances of developing severe depressive symptoms. We aim to shed light on the interplay between depression and the labor market, which is particularly important because the appropriate policy responses depend on whether depressive issues are a consequence or a determinant of poor labor market outcomes.We find that severe depressive symptoms lead to economic inactivity by reducing labor force participation and employment, and increasing the likelihood of unemployment. We also find that severe depressive symptoms are partially a consequence of economic inactivity. Interestingly, our results show larger effects for men than women, indicating that men's mental health is more closely tied to their employment outcomes than is women's. Further, men seem to be more responsive to the shock of a bad event --either the onset of a depressive episode or the onset of unemployment. In contrast, women appear to be more affected by prolonged depressive symptoms.The results imply that reducing the economic costs of mental illness is a challenge that is best tackled from both sides: improving mental health by promoting economic activity, minimizing employment disruptions and shortening unemployment spells, and reducing the barriers to employment and providing positive work environments for those with mental health issues. The results also call for a gendered approach to these policies. ABOUT THE AUTHORS AbstractThis paper analyzes the bilateral relationship between depressive symptoms and employment status. We find that severe depressive symptoms are partially a consequence of economic inactivity. The incidence of depressive symptoms is higher if individuals have been out of a job for an extended period. Men's mental health falls as they exit the labor force, while women's worsens only after they have been out of the labor force for a period of time.Entering unemployment is also associated with a substantial deterioration in mental health, particularly for men. We also find that severe depressive symptoms, in turn, lead to economic inactivity. Individuals are less likely to be labor force participants or employed if they experience severe depressive symptoms. Men's probability of being unemployed rises dramatically with the onset of depressive ...

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A Family Affair: Job Loss and the Mental Health of Spouses and Adolescents

Cited by 14 publications

References 53 publications

Unemployment and Subjective Well-Being

Unemployment and Subjective Well-Being

Unemployment: The Silent Epidemic

The Bilateral Relationship between Depressive Symptoms and Employment Status

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