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Partnership, Gender Roles and the Well-Being Cost of Unemployment

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  • Andreas Knabe
  • Ronnie Schöb
  • Joachim Weimann

Abstract

We use the differences between life satisfaction and emotional well-being of employed and unemployed persons to analyze how a person’s employment status affects cognitive well-being. Our results show that unemployment has a negative impact on cognitive, but not on affective well-being, which we interpret as a loss in identity utility. Living in a partnership strengthens the loss in identity utility of men, but weakens that of women. Unemployment of a person’s partner reduces the identity loss of unemployed men, but raises it for women. These results suggest that the unemployed’s feeling of identity is affected by traditional gender roles, while this does not seem to be the case for the affective part of their subjective well-being.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Knabe & Ronnie Schöb & Joachim Weimann, 2012. "Partnership, Gender Roles and the Well-Being Cost of Unemployment," CESifo Working Paper Series 3932, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3932
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Maike Luhmann & Pola Weiss & Georg Hosoya & Michael Eid, 2014. "Honey, I got Fired! A Longitudinal Dyadic Analysis of the Effect of Unemployment on Life Satisfaction in Couples," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 724, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Ronnie Schöb, 2013. "Unemployment and Identity," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 59(1), pages 149-180, March.
    3. Aart Gerritsen & Harald W. Lang, 2018. "Hirschman's tunnel effect goes abroad: International dimensions of social comparison and subjective well-being," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2018-02, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment; happiness; life satisfaction; Day Reconstruction Method; identity; partnership; gender roles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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