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Partnership, Gender, and the Well-Being Cost of Unemployment

Social Indicators Research volume 129, pages 1255–1275 (2016)Cite this article

Abstract

We examine the relationship between unemployment, life satisfaction and affective well-being depending on family status and, within couples, on the employment status of one’s partner. Our data, that we collected using the Day Reconstruction Method, show that unemployment is negatively related to life satisfaction, but not to affective well-being. Living in a partnership strengthens the loss in life satisfaction of men, but weakens that of women. Unemployment of a person’s partner is associated with a smaller loss in life satisfaction for unemployed men, but with a larger loss for women. We argue that these findings reflect to a large extent changes in cognitive well-being, which is closely related to identity utility. The unemployed’s feeling of identity appears to be affected by traditional gender roles.

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Notes

  1. For a discussion of the subdimensions of well-being, see Campbell (1976), Diener (1984), and Schimmack et al. (2008).

  2. A more detailed description of the survey design can be found in Knabe et al. (2010).

  3. We compared our findings when using weighted and unweighted data. Even though the statistical significance of some of the results differs depending on the use of weights, our qualitative findings remain unaffected.

  4. For a discussion of the net affect and alternative measures of affective experiences see e.g. the contributions in the volume edited by Krueger (2009).

  5. The correlation coefficient between life satisfaction and net affect at the individual level is 0.36.

  6. Throughout this section, Wald tests are used to examine statistical significance.

  7. This identification strategy faces a number of caveats, which we will discuss in Sect. 5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, P.O. Box 4120, 39016, Magdeburg, Germany

    Andreas Knabe & Joachim Weimann

  2. School of Business & Economics, Freie Universität Berlin, Boltzmannstr. 20, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Ronnie Schöb

Authors
  1. Andreas Knabe
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  2. Ronnie Schöb
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  3. Joachim Weimann
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ronnie Schöb.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 Descriptive statistics
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Knabe, A., Schöb, R. & Weimann, J. Partnership, Gender, and the Well-Being Cost of Unemployment. Soc Indic Res 129, 1255–1275 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1167-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1167-3

Keywords

  • Unemployment
  • Life satisfaction
  • Cognitive well-being
  • Affective well-being
  • Day reconstruction method
  • Identity
  • Partnership
  • Gender

JEL Classification

  • I31
  • J60
  • J22