Honey, I got fired! A longitudinal dyadic analysis of the effect of unemployment on life satisfaction in couples.

Luhmann, Maike; Weiss, Pola; Hosoya, Georg; Eid, Michael

doi:10.1037/a0036394

Cited by 61 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 79 publications

(164 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…We also point out that our paper substantively differs from Luhmann et al (2014), who study 2973 couples in the GSOEP during the years 1984-2009 and document their life satisfaction trajectories before and after unemployment using research methods from the psychology discipline. The models that the authors use have a number of limitations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

Your spouse is fired! How much do you care?

Nikolova

Ayhan

2018

J Popul Econ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study is the first to provide a causal estimate of the cross-spouse subjective well-being consequences of unemployment. Using German panel data on married and cohabiting partners for 1991-2015 and information on exogenous unemployment entry due to workplace closure, we show that one spouse's unemployment experience reduces the life satisfaction of the other partner. The estimated spillover is at least one quarter of the effect of own unemployment and is equally pronounced among female and male partners. In addition, while wives' life satisfaction does not recover even two years after their partners becoming unemployed, husbands only react to their wives' joblessness during the first year of unemployment. Our results are insensitive to income controls and the couple's position in the income distribution, thus reflecting the non-pecuniary costs of unemployment. Although the income loss hardly explains the negative spillover effects of unemployment on spousal life satisfaction, we document large declines in spousal satisfaction with household income and living standards. This finding supports the argument that the costs of unemployment borne by indirectly affected spouses extend beyond the loss of consumption opportunities and might be rather related to social values attached to market work. Being robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, our findings imply that public policy programs aimed at mitigating unemployment's negative consequences need to target not only those directly affected but also cohabiting spouses. J Popul Econ

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 88%

Your spouse is fired! How much do you care?

Nikolova

Ayhan

2018

J Popul Econ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When they are unemployed, their wives' unemployment appears to alleviate the well-being loss from unemployment. Luhmann et al (2014), using German SOEP data, find that both men and women suffer from their partner's unemployment only if they are employed, but not if they are unemployed themselves.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Which factors are responsible for the interactions between the two partners' employment statuses found by Clark (2003), Luhmann et al (2014)? One could imagine that unemployment becomes easier to bear if the partner is unemployed as well because this might make it easier to structure the day and to have contacts with other people.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partnership, Gender, and the Well-Being Cost of Unemployment

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examine the relationship between unemployment, life satisfaction and affective well-being depending on family status and, within couples, on the employment status of one's partner. Our data, that we collected using the Day Reconstruction Method, show that unemployment is negatively related to life satisfaction, but not to affective wellbeing. Living in a partnership strengthens the loss in life satisfaction of men, but weakens that of women. Unemployment of a person's partner is associated with a smaller loss in life satisfaction for unemployed men, but with a larger loss for women. We argue that these findings reflect to a large extent changes in cognitive well-being, which is closely related to identity utility. The unemployed's feeling of identity appears to be affected by traditional gender roles.

show abstract

“…The results showed that partners were similar with regard to both level and slope of the happiness trajectory. Also, in a longitudinal study with a nationally representative sample of couples from Germany, the life satisfaction of partners was correlated both before and after becoming unemployed (Luhmann, Weiss, Hosoya, & Eid, 2014). It is important to note that, although these studies were longitudinal, they do not inform about the potential causes of codevelopment in romantic relationships.…”

Section: Life Satisfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Codevelopment of well-being and self-esteem in romantic partners: Disentangling the effects of mutual influence and shared environment.

Orth¹,

Erol²,

Ledermann³

et al. 2018

Developmental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Common sense suggests that romantic partners tend to be interdependent in their well-being and self-esteem. The authors tested the degree to which codevelopment in romantic partners (i.e., development in similar directions) is due to mutual influence between partners or due to the effects of shared environment, using longitudinal data from 5 samples of couples (N = 4,116 participants). The samples included dating, cohabiting, and married couples, with a broad age range covering young adulthood to old age. The authors used a longitudinal version of the actor-partner interdependence model and examined measures of well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, and depression) and self-esteem. After conducting the study-level analyses, we meta-analytically aggregated the findings across studies. The results showed significant mutual influence between partners in life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, and depression, and significant effects of shared environment on life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, depression, and self-esteem. The findings suggest that both mutual influence and shared environment account for codevelopment of well-being in romantic partners. In contrast, only shared environment but not mutual influence contributes to the partners’ codevelopment of self-esteem. The findings have important implications because they show that the level of well-being of a person’s relationship partner has long-term influence on the person’s own well-being.

show abstract

Honey, I got fired! A longitudinal dyadic analysis of the effect of unemployment on life satisfaction in couples.

Cited by 61 publications

References 79 publications

Your spouse is fired! How much do you care?

Your spouse is fired! How much do you care?

Partnership, Gender, and the Well-Being Cost of Unemployment

Codevelopment of well-being and self-esteem in romantic partners: Disentangling the effects of mutual influence and shared environment.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About