Are there Regional Variations in the Psychological Cost of Unemployment in South Africa?

Nattavudh Powdthavee

Labor and Demography from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Are certain groups of unemployed individuals hurt less by unemployment than others? This paper is an attempt to test the hypothesis that non- pecuniary costs of unemployment may vary between societies with different unemployment rates. Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show that individuals’ reported well-being levels are inversely related to unemployment for South African adults as to be expected in richer countries. Reported well-being levels are shown to be associated negatively with regional unemployment rates for the employed. However, unemployment appears to hurt less for the individual if unemployment rates in the society are high.

Keywords: Happiness; Quality of Life; Unemployment; Social Norm; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J60 O10 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2003-10-27, Revised 2003-10-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu and nep-mfd
Note: Type of Document - pdf; prepared on WinXP; pages: 33; figures: 2
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/lab/papers/0310/0310006.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:wpa:wuwpla:0310006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Labor and Demography from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA (volker.schallehn@ub.uni-muenchen.de this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).