RESUMO
Unemployment affects not only the subjective well-being of the individual, but also that of the partner. Based on the life course perspective and the spillover-crossover-model, we examine the mediating role of relationship functioning for such crossover effects of partner's unemployment on subjective well-being. We also test whether gender differences in the mechanism of relationship functioning can explain the larger overall crossover effects on women compared to men. We use data from the German Family Panel pairfam (2008/09-2018/19), which provide more direct and comprehensive measures of relationship functioning than previous research, and allow us to examine couples' communication and interactions, their conflict styles and behaviors, relationship satisfaction, and perceived relationship instability as mediators. To analyze the impact of the partner's transition to unemployment on subjective well-being, we use fixed effects panel regression models and the product method of mediation analysis to estimate the indirect effects of relationship functioning. The results show that a partner's transition to unemployment has a negative impact on one's own well-being. The effects are more pronounced for women than men which can be partly explained by gender-specific effects of the partner's unemployment on various aspects of relationship functioning, rather than by differential effects of the latter on one's own well-being.
RESUMO
This article investigates the effects of transitions between employment and unemployment on health. It also addresses the question of whether or not the widespread use of temporary employment has altered the positive health effects of employment. Drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the period 1995-2010, we apply difference-in-differences propensity score matching to identify the direct causal effects of unemployment and reemployment on psychological and physical health. This combination of two approaches towards causal inference controls for both unobserved fixed effects and observable differences in a flexible semi-parametric specification. Our sample includes persons between the ages of 16-54 who have at least experienced one respective employment transition (treatment groups) or are continuously employed or unemployed (control groups). The results show that only psychological but not physical health is causally affected by the respective employment transitions. Specifically, the effects of unemployment and reemployment are of similar size, highlighting the importance of reemployment in compensating unemployment's negative impact on psychological health. In contrast, health selection and confounding seem to be important determinants of the cross-sectional association between unemployment and physical health. Carrying out separate analyses for permanent and temporary workers, we shed new light on the health effects of temporary employment. It has been argued that the rise of temporary employment has introduced a new inequality in the world of work, blurring the line between employment and unemployment. However, contrary to our expectations we find that both employment transitions have effects of a similar size for permanent and temporary workers. In sum, our results highlight two points. First, longitudinal research is needed to properly evaluate the health effects of unemployment, reemployment, and temporary employment. Second, compared to temporary employment, unemployment is still the greater threat to individuals' psychological health.
