The Emotional Timeline of Unemployment: Anticipation, Reaction, and Adaptation

Christian Scheve (), Frederike Esche and Jürgen Schupp
Additional contact information
Christian Scheve: Freie Universität Berlin
Frederike Esche: Freie Universität Berlin

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2017, vol. 18, issue 4, No 16, 1254 pages

Abstract: Abstract Unemployment continues to be one of the major challenges in industrialized societies. Aside from its economic and societal repercussions, questions concerning the subjective experience of unemployment have recently attracted increasing attention. Although existing studies have documented the detrimental effects of unemployment for cognitive (life satisfaction) and affective well-being, studies directly comparing these two dimensions of subjective well-being and their temporal dynamics in anticipation of and response to unemployment are absent from the literature. Using longitudinal data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and applying fixed effects regressions, we investigate changes in cognitive and affective well-being prior to and after job loss. Extending previous studies, we use discrete emotion measures instead of affect balance indicators to assess affective well-being. Our results support existing findings that unemployment leads to decreases in life satisfaction and that the unemployed do not adapt towards previous levels of life satisfaction. We also find that individuals more often experience sadness and anxiety, and less often happiness when transitioning into unemployment. Importantly, changes in affective well-being are less enduring compared to the changes in life satisfaction.

Keywords: Unemployment; Cognitive well-being; Affective well-being; Life satisfaction; Emotion; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-016-9773-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Emotional Timeline of Unemployment: Anticipation, Reaction, and Adaptation (2013)
Working Paper: The Emotional Timeline of Unemployment: Anticipation, Reaction, and Adaptation (2013)
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:spr:jhappi:v:18:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s10902-016-9773-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-016-9773-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().