Work Transitions, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being
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Work Transitions, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being Hye Yoon Chung 1
& Youjin
Hahn 1
Received: 23 April 2020 / Accepted: 4 August 2020/ # The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract We examine the gender differences in the magnitude of the effects of work transitions on subjective well-being using the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study data spanning from 2009 to 2016. We use the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) as a measure of self-reported levels of subjective well-being and apply the propensity score matching technique combined with the difference-in-differences strategy for the analysis. Our findings suggest that men tend to experience larger shifts in subjective well-being when becoming employed or unemployed compared with women; this gender gap is larger when becoming unemployed than employed. We further test and confirm that this gender gap widens between married couples and suggest that social norms or gender roles may be the underlying reasons for the gender differences. Keywords UK . Unemployed . Employed . Subjective well-being . Gender
Introduction Work affects our lives in many ways and is deeply related to human well-being (Ward and King 2017). It brings great value to human life and goes beyond the means of earning economic resources. While working, individuals make social connections with others, gain support from their social circle, and increase their self-esteem by achieving career goals. As the importance and value of nonpecuniary compensation from work increased, researchers started to shed light on subjective well-being as an alternative measure of utility for evaluating a response to changes in life events such as employment or unemployment (Kassenboehmer and Haisken-DeNew 2009; Winkelmann and Winkelmann 1998).
* Youjin Hahn [email protected] Hye Yoon Chung [email protected]
1
School of Economics, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
H. Y. Chung, Y. Hahn
We add to the literature by evaluating and comparing the size of both effects of becoming unemployed and employed, simply put, work transitions, on subjective wellbeing by gender.1 We further explore potential channels that may explain the gender differences in the size of change in subjective well-being as a response to work transitions. Consensus on the detrimental effect of unemployment on individuals’ subjective well-being (Clark and Oswald 1994; Clark 2003; Kassenboehmer and Haisken-DeNew 2009; Wulfgramm 2014) and the positive association between employment and mental well-being (Grün et al. 2010; Creed 1999) have been reached. However, the significance and magnitude of the employment effect are yet inconclusive when measured separately across genders. For instance, Ferreira et al. (2015) present that reemployment increases positive feelings and that the effect is particularly significant for reemployed women with long unemployment history. Thomas et al. (2005) also show that gaining employment is beneficial to subjective well-being using t
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