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The impact of husband’s job loss on partners’ mental health

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Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of job loss on family mental well-being. The negative income shock can affect the mental health status of the individual who directly experiences such displacement, as well as the psychological well-being of his partner; also, job loss may have a significantly detrimental effect on life satisfaction, self-esteem and on the individual’s perceived role in society. This analysis is based on a sample of married and cohabitating couples from the first 14 waves of the British Household Panel Survey. In order to correct for the possible endogeneity of job loss, data from employment histories is utilised and redundancies (different from dismissals) in declining industries are used as an indicator of exogenous job loss. Results show evidence that couples in which the husband experiences a job loss are more likely to experience poor mental health.

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Notes

  1. See Darity and Goldsmith (1996) for a review of psychological studies showing that unemployment has a negative impact on self-esteem.

  2. See also Flatau et al. (2000) for evidence from Australia.

  3. Additional samples of 1,500 households in Scotland and another 1,500 in Wales were added to the main sample in 1999, and in 2001 a sample of 2,000 households was added in Northern Ireland, making the panel suitable for UK-wide research. The additional samples are included in this analysis.

  4. Those couples where the man reaches 65 during the survey period are dropped at the time the man reaches 65.

  5. The proposed alternatives are: self employed, in-paid employment (full time or part time), unemployed, retired from paid work, on maternity leave, looking after family or home, full time student/at school, long-term sick or disabled, on a government training scheme, or other situations.

  6. The 12 questions are the following. Have you recently: been able to concentrate on whatever you are doing; Lost much sleep over worry? Felt that you are playing a useful part in things? Felt capable of making decisions about things? Felt constantly under strain? Felt you couldn’t overcome difficulties? Been able to enjoy your normal day to day activities? Been able to face up to your problems? Been feeling unhappy and depressed? Been losing confidence in yourself? Been thinking of yourself as a worthless person? Been feeling reasonably happy all things considered?

  7. An alternative is the GHQ Likert score, that is, a well-being score from 0 to 36. It is the sum of the responses to the twelve questions, coded so that the lowest well-being value scores 36 and the highest well-being value scores 0.

  8. Results are shown only for the second definition of poor mental health. Results from the first definition are very similar and are available on request.

  9. This estimator is implemented using the pweight option in STATA.

  10. Several studies of the effects of job displacements on earnings have used plant closures as exogenous displacements (Gibbons and Katz 1991 for the US and Doiron 1995 for Canada). In these studies, the use of large cross section surveys meant that rare events such as plant closures could be used in the analysis. Information on plant closures is not available in the BHPS.

  11. The BHPS contains the information according to the Standard Industrial Classification, until wave 10 and to the New Standard Industrial Classification 92 after wave 10).

  12. A three-years moving average workforce growth rate for every industry.

  13. The estimates of the standard errors in the pooled logit model allow for serial correlation within those errors, by using a robust estimator for the covariance matrix.

  14. Results from models including the redundancy in declining industry variable are not presented for parsimony and are available on request.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the participants of the 2009 European Society for Population Economics Annual Congress and the 2009 IZA Summer School in Labour Economics for their suggestions and comments. Special thanks my supervisors, Denise Doiron and Ian Walker, for their help and encouragement during the development of this paper. I am grateful to two anonymous referees and co-editor Michael Grossman for valuable comments and suggestions. The BHPS data was provided by the Economic and Social Research Council's Data-Archive at the University of Essex and is used with permission. The usual disclaimer applies.

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  1. School of Economics, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Silvia Mendolia

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Correspondence to Silvia Mendolia.

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Mendolia, S. The impact of husband’s job loss on partners’ mental health. Rev Econ Household 12, 277–294 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-012-9149-6

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