Boon or bane? Others' unemployment, well-being and job insecurity

Abstract

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 SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly. AbstractThe social norm of unemployment suggests that aggregate unemployment reduces the wellbeing of the employed, but has a far smaller effect on the unemployed. We use German panel data to reproduce this standard result, but then suggest that the appropriate distinction may not be between employment and unemployment, but rather between higher and lower levels of labour-market security. Those with good job prospects, both employed and unemployed, are strongly negatively affected by regional unemployment. However, the insecure employed and the poor-prospect unemployed are less negatively, or even positively, affected. We use our results to analyse labour-market inequality and unemployment hysteresis. JEL Classification Codes: D84, J60, Z83.

Is it vulnerability or economic insecurity that matters for health?

“…However subjective assessments of job insecurity also come with their own complications, such as capturing non-pecuniary benefits (Young, 2010) and are plausibly endogenously affected by health (and in particular mental health) either due to greater feelings of general anxiety, or a compromised ability to accurately predict future outcomes. 3 Nonetheless these indices have been successfully used in studies of health and wellbeing, notably by Green (2011) and Otterbach and Sousa-Poza (2014) who examined how employability mediates the mental health effects of A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t job insecurity, and by Clark et al (2010) who assessed its modifying effect on the relationship between unemployment and wellbeing.…”

The Relationship Between Size of Living Space and Subjective Well-Being

“…Mayraz et al (2009) found income comparisons to be a much better predictor of subjective well-being for men than women. Using econometric techniques on national panel datasets, Clark (2003), Clark et al (2010) and Shields et al (2009) all found that the subjective well-being of unemployed men rises when faced with other people's unemployment at the regional level. None found any effect for women, apart from Clark (2003) who found a weak relationship.…”

Job Search and (Re)employment: Taking the Time-varying Nature of Job-search Intensity into Consideration

“…On the societal level, the economic price of unemployment includes collective burden of benefits for the unemployed, other social welfare expenditures and lower tax revenues (Bjarnason & Sigurdardotirr, 2003). In addition, unemployment is considered to be the most important cause of poverty, frequently related with other social problems, such as outrage or rightwing extremism (Krueger & Pishke, 1997) and lower quality of life for all members of a society (Clarck, Knabe, & Ratzel, 2010). On the individual level, unemployment leads to decline in well-being.…”