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Unemployment and well-being of Europeans across the life cycle: The role of countries’ macroeconomic situation

Malisauskaite, Gintare, Nizalova, Olena, Xanthopoulou, Despoina (2022) Unemployment and well-being of Europeans across the life cycle: The role of countries’ macroeconomic situation. Social Indicators Research, . ISSN 0303-8300. (doi:10.1007/s11205-022-02892-y) (KAR id:93299)

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Official URL:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-022-02892-y

Abstract

Unemployment impairs individuals’ well-being and health and there is some empirical evidence showing that macroeconomic conditions can moderate these effects. This paper goes a step further and investigates differences in how macroeconomic indicators of European countries’ economic situation relate to individual subjective health and well-being, and also moderate the relationship between individual labour market exclusion and these outcomes across age groups: young individuals (aged 15-29), prime working age adults (aged 30-49, base category) and pre-retirement age adults (aged 50-64). We used two different macroeconomic indicators to define macroeconomic situation: country-level unemployment rate (UR) and gross domestic product (GDP). Both indicators were disaggregated into long-term economic trend and business cycle shocks using Hodrick-Prescott filtering to allow distinguishing between expected and unexpected change in macroeconomic circumstances. We used the European Social Survey (ESS) individual-level data from 35 European countries for 2002-2014. Multi-level analysis with three levels were run for men and women separately. Results revealed differences in how individual-level unemployment related to well-being depending on the age group, with pre-retirement age group adults’ health and well-being suffering the most. Also, macroeconomic indicators were found to moderate the relationship between individual-level unemployment and subjective health and well-being with some noticeable differences between age groups, and with GDP trend having the most sizeable influence.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/s11205-022-02892-y
Uncontrolled keywords: European age cohort analysis, Macroeconomic conditions, Subjective health and well-being, Unemployment
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research > Personal Social Services Research Unit
Depositing User: Gintare Malisauskaite
Date Deposited: 23 Feb 2022 14:33 UTC
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2022 12:27 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/93299 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)
Malisauskaite, Gintare: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0797-5949
Nizalova, Olena: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1704-2632
Xanthopoulou, Despoina: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2604-0962
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