Bowling Alone or Bowling at All? The Effect of Unemployment on Social Participation

Abstract

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The effect of unemployment on social participation of spouses: evidence from plant closures in Germany

“…More precisely, both directly and indirectly affected individuals reduce their participation in public social activities (a lower frequency of attending cultural events, cinema and volunteering) but at the same time intensify private social activities (an increased frequency of helping friends and neighbours) given that the indirectly affected individual is not employed. While the results for the directly affected spouse generally confirm the findings of Kunze and Suppa (2017) for couples, the novel and important aspect of this paper is that unemployment has quantitatively and qualitatively similar effects for the indirectly affected spouse. These findings illustrate that the effect of unemployment on social participation is quite substantial, which, in turn, points…”

“…However, it may not be completely exogenous to an individual due to anticipation effects resulting in a gradual leaving process of some workers prior the closing (Kassenböhmer and Haisken-DeNew, 2009, p.460). The presence of such a mechanism would imply an underestimation of the treatment effect (see also the discussion in Kunze and Suppa (2017) (1) and (3)) with the impact of the spouse's unemployment being even larger for the indirectly affected partner. Allowing the treatment effect to vary with a dummy for employment of the indirectly affected partner (models (2) and (4)) shows that directly affected individuals who recently lost their job due to a plant closure only increase private social activities if their spouse is not employed, as the interaction effects essentially offset the main effects and the sum of main and interaction effects is not significantly different from zero.…”

“…Moreover, social participation is frequently considered to be an important dimension of human well-being which requires further scrutiny (e.g., Sen, 2000, Stiglitz et al, 2009. The consequences of unemployment for social participation of directly affected individuals, however, have recently been highlighted by Kunze and Suppa (2017). They find negative and lasting effects for public social activities but also a retreat of individuals into private life, which, in turn, limits the access to information (e.g., about vacancies) associated with a broader and more heterogeneous network.…”

“…In addition, we apply a differencein-difference matching estimator based on entropy balancing (see Hainmueller (2012) and Marcus (2013)) in order to address both selection on observables and unobservables (with time-invariant effects). Following Kunze and Suppa (2017), social participation is measured by five distinct indicators which are grouped according to whether they are carried out in private or public. Specifically, we use the frequencies of attending cultural events; cinema, pop concerts and the like; performing volunteer work (all carried out in public); social gatherings; and helping out friends (both private).…”

Towards a multidimensional poverty index for Germany

“…Some studies also directly examine the effect of unemployment on specific functioning achievements. Kunze and Suppa (2014), for instance, find unemployment to reduce social participation, whereas Schmitz (2011) finds no effect on health in general. If, however, perfect measures for all relevant functionings were available, there would be no need to rely on an unemployment indicator.…”