Unemployment and well-being in Europe. The effect of country unemployment rate, work ethics and family ties

Subjective well-being literature shows that higher unemployment rate corresponds to lower psychological cost of own unemployment. The goal of the paper is to deepen the understanding of this regularity by investigating the role played by the work ethics and the strength of family ties. I analyze the European Values Study data (2008) for 36 countries using multilevel regression methodology. First, starting from the “stigma hypothesis” I postulate that higher unemployment rate is associated with weaker work values, which correspond to less social pressure and feeling of guilt, in turn lowering the psychological cost of own unemployment. This is only partly supported by the data: whereas stronger work values lower the well-being of unemployed, the country work ethics has no effect. According to the second hypothesis, stronger family ties raise the well-being of the unemployed. This prediction is con?rmed: people living in countries with stronger family ties and those declaring stronger norms for family support suffer less from being unemployed. However, the strength of family ties does not mediate the link between unemployment rate and effect of own unemployment. Moreover, weaker family ties contribute to lower well-being of unemployed in western Europe.