Sweets for my sweet: The impact of partner unemployment on individual physical health

Giovanni Gallo and Michele Ubaldi

No 1638, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of partner unemployment on individual physical health. Using data from two nationally representative Italian surveys of households and employing partial identification to address endogenous selection into unemployment, we show that the impact of partner unemployment on individual physical health is related to the role of the unemployed within the household. We document a null effect when the spouse is unemployed, whereas we find a negative health effect when the household head is unemployed. The negative effect of household head unemployment may be explained by a larger budget constraint and a consequent change in the dietary habits involving all household members. In particular, we highlight a decline in the quality of food consumption in the household when the household head is unemployed.

Keywords: Unemployment; dietary habits; consumption; food quality; body mass index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 I10 J12 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/323342/1/GLO-DP-1638.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1638

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().