Gender, Unemployment and Subjective Well-Being: Why Being Unemployed Is Worse for Men than for Women

This paper tries to explain why unemployment has such a severe effect on the subjective well-being of people. It is already known that unemployed have among the lowest levels of subjective well-being of all people. This paper explains and tests why this is so. The explanation is based on the social...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social indicators research 2014-01, Vol.115 (1), p.23-44
Main Author: van der Meer, Peter H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Employment
Europe
Females
Gender
Gender differences
Happiness
Human Geography
Husbands
Hypotheses
Income estimates
Males
Men
Microeconomics
Minority Groups
Parametric models
Production estimates
Production functions
Productivity
Profit
Profits
Public Health
Quality of life
Quality of Life Research
Sex
Sex Differences
Single status
Single women
Social Function
Social problems and social policy. Social work
Social research
Social Sciences
Social surveys
Sociology
Studies
Unemployment
Utility functions
Well Being
Wellbeing
Women
Working women
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper tries to explain why unemployment has such a severe effect on the subjective well-being of people. It is already known that unemployed have among the lowest levels of subjective well-being of all people. This paper explains and tests why this is so. The explanation is based on the social production function theory. This theory states that ultimately people strive for physical well-being and social approval. Because unemployment affect both physical well-being and social approval its effect is so large. We elaborate this explanation to account for the difference between men and women. Because men and women have different ways of achieveing social approval unemployment is more detremental for men than for women. We further analyze differences between single men and women and married men and women to test the explanation that is put forward. Using the European Social Survey held in 2004 the hypotheses are tested. We do find that having a job is one of the main factors affecting subjective well-being, that this effect is bigger for men than for women and that women profit from the jobs of their partners whereas men do not.
ISSN:0303-8300
1573-0921
DOI:10.1007/s11205-012-0207-5