The effects of job displacement on spousal health
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The effects of job displacement on spousal health Nicholas A. Jolly1
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Received: 5 March 2020 / Accepted: 13 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper studies how job displacement influences the health of the worker’s spouse. Results show that the husband’s displacement leads to an increase in the probability of the wife reporting her physical health as fair/poor. These wives are also more likely to experience high blood pressure, heart disease, and/or emotional issues. Wives who are in poor health at baseline, are in low financial standing prior to the husbands’ job loss, are not working two years before the husbands’ job loss, and have children at home at the time of the husbands’ displacement tend to drive these results. Husbands of displaced wives experience little change in self-reported health, the probability of high blood pressure, heart disease, or emotional issues. Keywords Job displacement Health spillovers Health outcomes ●
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JEL Codes I10 J63 J65 ●
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1 Introduction This paper analyzes the effect job displacement has on the health of a worker’s spouse. Studying this topic provides insight into the total costs associated with worker displacement, which is of importance when designing efficient policies aimed at helping displaced workers and their families. The effects of worker displacement spill over to other family members, through an increase in spousal labor supply (Stephens 2002), reduced school performance of children (Rege et al. 2011), and less access to employer-sponsored health insurance (Jolly and Phelan 2015). Therefore, the costs of displacement extend well beyond the lost earnings associated with any resulting unemployment or the elimination of firm- or industry-specific human
Supplementary information The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-02009519-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Nicholas A. Jolly [email protected] 1
Department of Economics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881, USA
N. A. Jolly
capital. The findings presented here will provide evidence on another familial cost of worker displacement, the physical and mental health of the affected worker’s spouse. Most of the research on job displacement focuses on the labor market effects associated with this type of involuntary job loss. Research shows that displaced workers experience large, sustained earnings losses (e.g., Jacobson et al. 1993; Couch and Placzek 2010) and short-run increases in employment instability (Ruhm 1991; Sullivan and von Wachter 2007). Displacement is also associated with an increased probability of involuntarily holding a part-time or temporary job (Farber 1999, 2013). Workers who suffer from this type of job loss also experience a decrease in the likelihood of receiving employer-provided fringe benefits, such as life insurance, dental insurance, retirement benefits, paid sick leave, and employersponsored training (Jolly and Phelan 2015), wh
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