Empirical Results

Abstract

The empirical results are presented in this section. It begins by illustrating how social involvement is associated with basic socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics. This is done by replicating existing cross-sectional findings in the literature. Then, longitudinal models are used to address the hypotheses about the causal effects of unemployment on social involvement and the underlying pathways that mediate and moderate their relationships. As described in Chapter 4, it is hypothesized that unemployment negatively affects social involvement. Furthermore, material and non-material losses are assumed to mediate the negative impact of unemployment. Depending on social role expectations, people’s educational level and their previous social and occupational status, higher losses and lower (expected) rewards from social involvement are hypothesized to result in greater negative effects of unemployment.