Quantitative Analysis of the Links between Psychological Well-being & Employment Outcomes: International Evidence
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This thesis seeks principally to examine the nature of the long-term associations between \nhuman well-being and unfavourable employment outcomes. Given the surge in insecure \nemployment and unemployment following the Great Recession, it identifies unemployment \nand hours-underemployment, being a prevalent type of precarious employment, as major \nlabour market hardships. Specifically, it proposes that (i) unemployment has long-run welfare \nconsequences that can be observed internationally and that (ii) hours-underemployment is an \nimportant determinant of psychological well-being both contemporarily and in the long run. \nFurther, it is important to recognise that employment outcomes and psychological well-being \nmay be mutually defined. The third aim of the thesis is therefore to explore whether prelabour \nmarket psychological health predicts employment difficulties, namely unemployment, \nacross life. Three individual chapters explore these distinct research objectives. \nChapter 3 studies the long-term psychological effects of past unemployment across 14 \nEuropean countries, using a cross-national, longitudinal survey. Past unemployment is shown \nto predict reduced satisfaction with life and quality of life after the age of 50, after controlling \nfor the influence of country-specific passive labour market policies and macro-economic \nconditions. Overall, evidence is uncovered that unemployment psychological scarring is a \nbroad, cross-country phenomenon. Chapter 4 sheds new light on the hitherto largely \nneglected well-being effects of hours-underemployment. Using samples drawn from \nnationally representative British surveys, it shows that working part-time while preferring to \nwork more hours is substantially associated with elevated psychologicall distress \ncontemporarily, after adjusting for socio-economic confounding characteristics. Moreover, \ntransitions from full-time employment to hours-underemployment appear to predict increased \ndistress over long time intervals, after controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity. \nFinally, chapter 5 explores the impact of adolescent mental health on adult unemployment. \nUsing a sample of Swedish males, objective diagnoses of specific subtypes of mental health \nconditions appear to predict prolonged time spent in unemployment over lifelong labour \nmarket trajectories, after adjusting for common family characteristics shared among siblings. \nAdditionally, the long-term unemployment impact of adolescent mental ill-health appears to \nbe magnified during the period following the 1990s Swedish crisis, suggesting that workers \nwith poor mental health may bear disproportionately high economic burdens during recessions. \nTaken together, these studies highlight the importance of two types of interventions: (i) short-term \nactivation programmes designed to compensate for well-being losses among \nunemployed and underemployed workers and (ii) long-term preventative interventions \naiming to enhance psychological well-being even prior to labour market entry.
Author: Victoria Mousteri
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2972438566