Jobless, Friendless and Broke: What Happens to Different Areas of Life Before and After Unemployment?

an article by Nattavudh Powdthavee (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) published in Economica Volume 79 Issue 315 (July 2012)

Abstract

Using a nationally representative longitudinal dataset of the British people, this paper explores how different areas of a person’s life evolved before and after unemployment.

There is evidence that unemployment is preceded, on average, by a year of dissatisfaction with one’s finance and job, for both genders.

Having entered unemployment, men and women reported a significant and persistent drop in satisfaction with finance and social life, which perhaps explains why there is little overall hedonic adaptation [see Wikipedia for definition] to unemployment. This paper proposes a two-layer model to study leads and lags in life satisfaction to changes in employment status.

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