Unemployment and Self-Assessed Health: Evidence from Panel Data

Abstract

We analyse the relationship between unemployment and self-assessed health using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for Finland over the period 1996-2001. Our results reveal that the event of becoming unemployed does not matter as such for self-assessed health. The health status of those that end up being unemployed is lower than that of the continually employed. Hence, persons who have poor health are being selected for the pool of the unemployed. This explains why, in a cross-section, unemployment is associated with poor self-assessed health. However, we are somewhat more likely to obtain the negative effects of unemployment on health when long-term unemployment is used as the measure of unemployment experience.JEL Classification: C30, J28, J31.

Economic crisis and the unemployment effect on household food expenditure: The case of Spain

“…Inspired by previous studies of the causal impacts of unemployment status on certain health variables (see, e.g., Böckerman and Ilmakunnas, 2009;Urbanos-Garrido and López-Valcárcel, 2015), we used matching techniques and DiD methods to measure the relationship between unemployment and household food consumption and to test how an economic crisis could change this relationship. These empirical methods are described in the next subsections.…”

A Review of Health Consequences of Recessions Internationally and a Synthesis of the US Response during the Great Recession

“…Therefore the results of some micro studies may reflect the previous health conditions of the unemployed or newly unemployed. [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] Previous reviews note the divergence in the results of micro and macro studies and suggest that the policy agenda will remain ambiguous until there is greater methodological agreement and advancement. 10,36 Fortunately, several recent articles have come a long way to clarify this controversy.…”

Sick of Your Job? Negative Health Effects from Non-Optimal Employment

“…Browning et al (2006); Salm (2009) and Böckerman and Ilmakunnas (2009) do not nd causal eects of entering unemployment on individual health, while other studies suggest negative health consequences of job loss (Sullivan and Von Wachter, 2009;Eliason and Storrie, 2009). For Germany, Gordo (2006) nds negative eects of unemployment on health for males while Schmitz (2011) does not nd causal eects of being unemployed on individual health.…”