Boon or Bane? Others' Unemployment, Well-Being and Job Insecurity

By Andrew E. Clark, Andreas Knabe, Steffen Raetzel. Social Science Research Network, 2008

352 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The social norm of unemployment suggests that aggregate unemployment reduces the well-being 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, at least for men. Men with good job prospects, both employed and unemployed, are strongly negatively affected by regional unemployment. However, insecure employed men and poor-prospect unemployed men are less negatively, or even positively, affected. There is however no clear relationship for women. We analyse labour-market inequality and unemployment hysteresis in the light of our results.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d737b0c1f1b3d3173af4aa4e11a1c454c25373fb

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Citations in the corpus

Feeling useless: the effect of unemployment on mental health in the Great Recession (2018, neutral): “In column (5) of Table 5 we show that the unemployed are more likely to use medicine.”
Does Unemployment Hurt Less if There is More of it Around? A Panel Analysis of Life Satisfaction in Germany and Switzerland (2013, neutral): “Using the German SOEP 1984–2006, he found that higher regional unemployment does not affect unemployed men, but significantly diminishes the well-being of unemployed women (Clark et al., 2010: p. 58).”
Institutions versus market forces: Explaining the employment insecurity of European individuals during (the beginning of) the financial crisis (2011, background): “In addition, job and employment insecurity have dire consequences for the mental and physical health and well-being of workers (Ashford et al., 1989; Clark et al., 2010; Hellgren et al., 1999; Näswall and De Witte, 2003).”
Performance appraisals and job satisfaction (2017, neutral): “…have shown that relative pay comparisons among employees, especially the individual rank in income distributions, have a negative impact on job and pay satisfaction and negatively affect effort provision (Brown et al., 2008; Clark et al., 2010; Card et al., 2012; Ockenfels et al. (forthcoming)).”
Will GDP Growth Increase Happiness in Developing Countries? (2011, methodology): “This finding has been replicated in using the life satisfaction scores in GSOEP data by Clark et al., 2010).”
UK Unemployment in the Great Recession (2010, result): “This result, however, contrasts with the findings of Clark (2003), using BHPS panel data for the UK, and Clark et al. (2008) using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel.”
Job Security and Employee Well-Being: Evidence from Matched Survey and Register Data (2011, neutral): “In particular, these indicators allow for the existence of macroeconomic effects, because they have been shown to be important determinants of subjective well-being (e.g. Clark et al., 2010).”
Changing Identity: Retiring from Unemployment (2014, neutral): “*** Freie Universität Berlin, School of Business and Economics, Boltzmannstraße 20, 14195 Berlin, Germany, Email: ronnie.schoeb@fu-berlin.de.”