Regional unemployment and norm-induced effects on life satisfaction

While rising unemployment generally reduces people's happiness, researchers argue that there is a compensating social-norm effect for the unemployed individual, who might suffer less when it is more common to be unemployed. This empirical study, however, rejects this thesis for German panel data and finds individual unemployment to be even more hurtful when aggregate unemployment is higher. On the other hand, an extended model that separately considers individuals who feel stigmatised from living off public funds yields strong evidence that this group of people does in fact suffer less when the normative pressure to earn one's own living is lower. --social norms,unemployment,well-being,social benefits,labour market policies

Regional Unemployment and Norm-Induced Effects on Life Satisfaction

While rising unemployment generally reduces people's happiness, researchers argue that there is a compensating social-norm effect for the unemployed individual, who might suffer less when it is more common to be unemployed. This empirical study, however, rejects this thesis for German panel data and finds individual unemployment to be even more hurtful when aggregate unemployment is higher. On the other hand, an extended model that separately considers individuals who feel stigmatised from living off public funds yields strong evidence that this group of people does in fact suffer less when the normative pressure to earn one's own living is lower.social norms, unemployment, well-being, social benefits, labour market policies

Employed but Still Unhappy?: On the Relevance of the Social Work Norm

In the modern welfare state, people who cannot make a living usually receive financial assistance from public funds. Accordingly, the so-called social work norm against living off other people is violated, which may be the reason why the unemployed are so unhappy. If so, however, labour market concepts based on the notion of promoting low-paid jobs that are subsidised if necessary with additional payments would appear far less favourable. It could be that people are employed, but still unhappy. Using German panel data, this paper examines the relevance of the social work norm and finds a significant disutility effect of living off public funds. Although this is true for employed people as well, the results show that the individual is generally better off having a job that requires additional assistance, than having no job at all. On the other hand, such policies as the recent German labour market reforms can trigger undesired side-effects, if policy-makers ignore the issue of the social work norm.Unemployment, Social benefits, Low-wages, Labour market policies, Social norms, Well-being

Temporary contracts and workers' satisfaction

Fixed-term contracts are often considered a key policy tool for increasing employment. As we show that contract limitation lowers job satisfaction using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study, we detect a drawback of promoting temporary employment that has not been identified so far. We find that the “honeymoon-hangover” effect of a new job must be taken into account to reveal this result. We examine reasons why employees suffer from temporary contracts and analyse the “Flexicurity” idea of compensating workers with security. Our findings contribute to research on workers’ well-being as well as to the debate on labour market flexibilisation

Changing jobs does not necessarily bring you happiness

When people have left the previous job willingly, they're happier in the new position, but the feeling is short-lived, write Adrian Chadi and Clemens Hetschk

Meaningless work threatens job performance

It causes anger and disappointment, and can negatively affect employees' later motivation, write Adrian Chadi, Sabrina Jeworrek and Vanessa Mertin