Job Insecurity and Life Satisfaction in Ghana
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Job Insecurity and Life Satisfaction in Ghana Iddisah Sulemana1 · Richard Osei Bofah1 · Edward Nketiah‑Amponsah1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract How labour market outcomes influence the life satisfaction of people have been studied by many scholars. In particular, prior studies have examined how perceived risk of losing one’s job affects one’s life satisfaction. We contribute to this literature by exploring whether fear of losing one’s job or not finding a job in Ghana influences one’s life satisfaction. We used data from Wave 6 of the World Values Survey to empirically examine whether job insecurity or fear of not finding a job was correlated with life satisfaction. Our results from OLS and logistic regressions show unambiguously that job insecurity did not exert a significant effect on life satisfaction among Ghanaians. We speculate several explanations for this finding, including the idea that the pervasiveness of the problem in Ghana may be the primary reason job insecurity was uncorrelated with life satisfaction in the country. Keywords Fear of job loss · Job insecurity · Life satisfaction · Subjective well-being · Ghana JEL classification D84 · I31 · J60
Introduction Around the world, job insecurity has risen considerably, gaining momentous media attention (Otterbach and SousaPoza 2016). Because job insecurity has many deleterious consequences for human well-being (e.g., physical and mental health, life satisfaction, happiness, and marital stability), numerous studies have sought to understand how and why job insecurity diminishes subjective well-being (e.g., Clark et al. 2010; Clark and Oswald 1994; Cuyper and de Witte 2005, 2006; Green 2011; Otterbach and Sousa-Poza 2016). At the same time, the concept of subjective well-being continues to attract the attention of scholars and policymakers. Individuals (and for that matter workers) attach high value to their subjective well-being—life satisfaction and happiness (e.g., Diener 1984; Diener et al. 1998; Freeman 1978; Frey * Iddisah Sulemana [email protected] Richard Osei Bofah [email protected] Edward Nketiah‑Amponsah [email protected] 1
Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon, P. O. Box LG 57, Accra, Ghana
and Benz 2008a, b; Linley et al. 2009; Lucas et al. 2004, 2008; Mau et al. 2012). This is anchored in the notion that the ultimate goal in life is to be happy or more satisfied with one’s life as espoused by Aristotle (Erdogan et al. 2012; Frey and Stutzer 2002). The interest in subjective welfare analysis among economists is a recent phenomenon relative to the interest among sociologists and psychologists (e.g., Blanchflower 2000; Clark 2006; Freeman 1978; Frey and Benz 2008a, b; Knabe et al. 2010; Knabe and Rätzel 2011). For instance, while the concept of life satisfaction or happiness remains a major concern in psychology and its related fields (Diener 1984; Diener and Dierner 1995; Diener et al. 1998, 1999; Linley et al. 2009; Lucas et al. 2004, 2008; Luhman
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