Subjective W Ell-being and a Ggregate U Nemployment: Further E Vidence
Year: 2011
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: According to the literature, individual well-being is negatively related to aggregate unemployment. This study examines whether the distribution of aggregate unemployment by duration affects well-being, in addition to the level of unemployment. Different explanations are provided to indicate how the shares of short-term (up to 3 months) and long-term (more than 1 year) unemployed people could affect the well-being of the employed and unemployed. Using data from almost 300,000 individuals from 11 EU countries, we find significant effects of both shares on life satisfaction. Among the unemployed, for example, we find a U-shaped effect of the distribution of aggregate unemployment by duration on subjective well-being, which compensates to some extent for the negative effect of the unemployment rate. II NTRODUCTION The contemporaneous correlation between individual unemployment and wellbeing has been found to be sizeable and significantly negative in the literature, 1 and the question of whether unemployment duration matters at the individual level has been addressed in a number of studies. 2 In addition, there is evidence that aggregate unemployment is negatively related to well-being, 3 and that this effect is much lower in the public sector than in the private. 4 However, little is known about what is behind the effect of aggregate unemployment. It is simply possible that the level of aggregate unemployment
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Carsten Ochsen
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2468353062