Employed but still unhappy? On the relevance of the social work norm

Adrian Chadi

No 42, CAWM Discussion Papers from University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP)

Abstract: In the modern welfare state, people who cannot make a living usually receive financial assistance from public funds. Accordingly, the so-called social work norm against living off other people is violated, which may be the reason why the unemployed are so unhappy. If so, however, labour market concepts based on the notion of promoting low-paid jobs that are subsidised if necessary with additional payments would appear far less favourable. It could be that people are employed, but still unhappy. Using German panel data, this paper examines the relevance of the social work norm and finds a significant disutility effect of living off public funds. Although this is true for employed people as well, the results show that the individual is generally better off having a job that requires additional assistance, than having no job at all. On the other hand, such policies as the recent German labour market reforms can trigger undesired side-effects, if policy-makers ignore the issue of the social work norm.

Keywords: Unemployment; Social benefits; Low-wages; Labour market policies; Social norms; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J38 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/51370/1/672467062.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Employed But Still Unhappy? On the Relevance of the Social Work Norm (2012)
Working Paper: Employed but Still Unhappy?: On the Relevance of the Social Work Norm (2011)
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:cawmdp:42

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAWM Discussion Papers from University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().