The Effect of Unemployment on Social Participation of Spouses: Evidence from Plant Closures in Germany

Lars Kunze and Nicolai Suppa ()

No 898, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: This paper estimates the effect of an individual’s unemployment on the level of social participation of their spouse. Using German panel data, it is shown that unemployment has a strong negative effect on public social activities of both directly and indirectly affected spouses. Private social activities of either spouse, however, are only found to increase, if the indirectly affected spouse is not working. Conflict prevention strategies or habituation may help to rationalise this finding. Our results imply that active labour market policies should account for spillovers effects within couples and adopt a family perspective.

Keywords: Unemployment; social participation; plant closure; entropy balancing; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 p.
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The effect of unemployment on social participation of spouses: evidence from plant closures in Germany (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp898

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