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In a national sample of the Italian population, surveyed four times between October 2002 and January 2007 (N = 2,008), we performed a multilevel longitudinal study aimed at predicting the increase in crime risk perception as a function of three families of independent variables, respectively lying at the within individual level (direct victimization and indirect victimization), at the between-individuals level (being a woman, being an older person, being a poorly educated person and size of area of residence) and at the ecological level (county's crime rate, unemployment rate and immigration rate). Direct and indirect victimization, being a woman, being an older person, living in a large town and in a context characterized by high crime and unemployment rates positively influenced the change in crime risk perception, while the other individual and ecological predictors we used in our predictive model did not. Strengths, limitations, implications and future developments of this research are discussed.

This paper investigates ten Asian nations to consider how socio-economic values affect happiness and satisfaction. Moreover, it considers whether economic factors can strongly affect wellbeing under certain conditions. Males in Asia are said they have more opportunities to obtain higher happiness and satisfaction but it does not happen in the current study. Unemployment has negative and significant impact with regard to happiness and satisfaction in developing countries yet it does not have the same effect in developed nations. It is believed cultural value positively affects happiness and satisfaction in East Asia but the result in the models is different with no clear relationship between this variable and wellbeing. Furthermore, some people declare that a relative increase of income compared to the lowest group will lead them to lower life satisfaction.

This paper analyzed the effect of major positive and negative life events (marriage, divorce, birth of child, widowhood, and unemployment) on life satisfaction. For the first time, this study estimated the effects of life events not with a precision of 12 months but of 3 months. Specifically, two questions were addressed: (1) Does the precision of the temporal localization of the event (i.e., 12 or 3 months) affect the observed trajectories of life satisfaction, and (2) is the precision of the temporal localization more important for negative life events? As expected, results showed that the precision of temporal localization allows a clearer view on hedonic adaptation, in particular following negative life events.

In this paper we use data from a population survey on quality of life dimensions conducted in Uruguay to analyze the self reported well-being among workers and non workers. Along with the literature, we find that the probability of being happy is greater for workers than non-workers. Specifically, we find evidence that workers tend to be more satisfied with their economic situation and heath, but less content with their leisure time. A number of personal and family characteristics were identified to play a role in explaining the differences in reported satisfaction between the two groups: age, gender, family size, having a life partner. Although, the self reported satisfaction with the family situation seems to be similar for workers and non-workers.

There is a common belief that economic crisis will lead to a decrease in subjective wellbeing. Previous studies indicate that income is correlated with happiness and unemployment with unhappiness. The relationship between increased income and happiness is well documented while the impact of decreased income has been less explored. The aim of this paper is to study how the economic downfall in Iceland, followed by reduced income and increased unemployment, affects happiness as well as to explore which groups are most vulnerable to changes in happiness and which are most resilient. The study is a longitudinal, nationally representative postal survey which assessed 5,918 individual's aged 18-79. A total of 4,092 (77.3%) answered again in 2009. The relationship between economic factors and happiness was explored using multiple linear regression to find out how much they explain of the happiness variance and the changes in happiness, together with demographic factors, health and social relationships. Results indicate that income and unemployment did not predict happiness but financial difficulties did. A decrease in happiness was detected after the collapse. The change in happiness from 2007 to 2009 was normally distributed, 40% had the same score in both years and an equal number increased as decreased. The explored factors did not explain the changes in happiness. The economic crisis had a limited affect on happiness. Those with financial difficulties were hardest hit. Changes in happiness need to be studied further since they are not well explained by the factors which influence cross-sectional levels of happiness.

We apply cohort techniques to monitor four indicators of socio-demographic risk crucial to family wellbeing; namely, income, employment, education, and housing. The data were derived from New Zealand's five-yearly Census for the period 1981-2006. This allowed us to track birth cohorts of mothers (and their families) over six successive New Zealand censuses focusing on the main childrearing ages of 20-59. This produced ten cohorts--termed "open familial cohorts"--ranging from mothers born in the period 1932-1937 through to 1977-1981. We present age, period and cohort analyses. Families in which the mother is in her early 20s were the most vulnerable, with the lowest incomes, the greatest risk of worklessness, and the lowest levels of home ownership. Of particular interest is that those in the most recent cohorts--born since 1967--were worse off compared to earlier cohorts. The period from the mid-1980s to the mid-to-late 1990s was one of greatest "socio-demographic risk", with the lowest work, income and education prospects over the 25 years. The picture on generational profiles was mixed. Contrary to popular mythology the "baby-boomer" cohorts did not enjoy an unqualified advantage over others; indeed the most recent cohorts were doing well, with relatively high incomes, education and work levels. The analysis is successful in identifying age and period effects over a period of major social change, and in documenting cohort experiences for each indicator, thus demonstrating the potential of constructing cohorts from routinely-collected census micro-data for monitoring and policy purposes.

This study used data from the German Socio-economic Panel to examine gender differences in the extent to which self-reported subjective well-being was associated with occupying a high-level managerial position in the labour market, compared with employment in non-leadership, non-high-level managerial positions, unemployment, and non-labour market participation. Our results indicated that a clear hierarchy exists for men in term of how status within the labour market was associated with subjective life satisfaction. Unemployed men were the least satisfied, followed by men who were not in the labour market, while men in leadership positions reported the highest level of subjective life satisfaction. For women, no statistically significant differences were observed among women in high-level managerial positions, women who worked in non-high-level positions, and women who specialized in household production, with no market work. Only women who were unemployed reported lower levels of life satisfaction, compared with women in other labour-market statuses. Our results lend evidence to the contention that men can "have it all", but women must still choose between career and family in Germany. We argue that interventions need to address how the non-pecuniary rewards associated with high-level managerial and leadership positions can be increased for women. Such policies would also likely serve to mitigate the "pipeline" problem concerning the number of women who are available to move into high positions in the private sector.

This paper shows that the partisan composition of government is strongly related to the well-being of citizens, measured by the reported level of life satisfaction and suicide rates in industrial countries. Our analysis, using survey data of 14 nations between 1980 and 2002, shows that the presence of left-leaning parties in government is associated with an increase the level of individual life satisfaction. The relationship holds true even after controlling for the effects of macroeconomic variables such as gross domestic product, unemployment rates and government welfare policies. Our panel data analysis of 21 nations between 1980 and 2004 also shows that suicide rates decrease when a country experiences a shift to more left-leaning government. The increased presence of right-wing parties in government has a negligible effect on suicide rates.

In this paper we investigate the role of several socio-economic and non-economic factors such as absolute and relative income, education and religion to explain the differences of happiness levels of Turkish and Moroccan Immigrants in the Netherlands by using ordered logit model. We focus on members of the Moroccan and Turkish communities, as these are the two largest non-EU immigrant communities in the Netherlands. Our findings reveal that Moroccans, although they have lower income levels and higher unemployment rates than Turkish immigrants, their happiness level is higher than the Turkish immigrants. In order to understand this dilemma a questionnaire survey was performed to 111 Turkish and 96 Moroccan immigrants in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Utrecht and Arnhem in 2010. The main purpose is to investigate how reference group's self-reported life satisfaction is related to the level of absolute income; the level of relative income and other socio-economic factors. The main findings are that for Turkish sample relative income is significantly and negatively correlated with life satisfaction whereas, both absolute income (positively) and relative income (negatively) are significantly correlated with life satisfaction for Moroccan case.

The paper analyzes subjective poverty in Hungary and compares it to the objective poverty concepts. Subjective poverty is defined by examining who people consider to be poor. Based on the Easterlin paradox, the initial hypothesis states that subjective and absolute poverty concepts are highly correlated. Taking into account that Hungary is a developed country, subjective well-being is supposed to be associated not only with absolute, but also with relative deprivation. The methods of systematic data collection are used to collect data about the belief of the population. The paper concludes that low income level, Roma descent, entitlement to social supports and unemployment are the items thought to be most related to poverty by the informants. It proves that subjective poverty is a multidimensional concept. It also concludes that absolute and relative poverty thresholds coincide with the subjective one. It implies that increasing the absolute income level of individuals may not be enough to improve their subjective wellbeing as they are also concerned with their relative income position.

Financial capability, or people's ability to manage and take control of their finances, is receiving increasing interest among policy makers as more people find themselves in difficult financial situations during the current economic downturn. We tackle the problem of how to measure financial capability--with a specific focus on making ends meet and money management--using data from a general household survey (the British Household Panel Survey), and then identify its key determinants using panel data models. This is important if appropriate policies and programmes are to be targeted at those most in need. We find the lowest financial capability among young unemployed single adults living in households with other unrelated non-working adults. In contrast, older men and women in full-time work with an employed spouse have the most financial capability.

In this article, we investigate the effect of individual and community level characteristics on subjective well-being in Belgium. Various indicators for subjective well-being are being used in a multilevel analysis of the 2009 SCIF survey (n = 2,080) and the 2006 Belgian ESS sample (n = 1,798). On the individual level, most hypotheses on the determinants of subjective well-being were confirmed. Living with a partner and age were shown to have strong effects, but also social capital indicators had a significant positive effect on subjective well-being. All these effects remained significant controlling for optimism. On the community level, especially unemployment rate had a negative impact on subjective well-being. The analysis further demonstrates that in homogeneous regions, community characteristics have a far weaker impact on subjective well-being indicators than in economically more heterogeneous regions.

This paper investigates the cross-country distribution of the relationship between economic conditions and well-being. Using a large sample of individuals from 94 countries worldwide, we find that the effect of income on well-being is larger in countries with lower GDP per capita, while the negative effect of being unemployed is stronger in countries with higher unemployment rate or higher GDP per capita. Interestingly, the effect of being unemployed displays positive spatial dependence across countries that is not accounted for by aggregate socio-economic conditions. Overall, the results indicate that geography, culture and institutions must be explicitly taken into account in order to understand the relationship between economic conditions and well-being.

This paper investigates the role of economic variables in predicting regional disparities in reported life satisfaction of European Union (EU) citizens. European subnational units (regions) are defined according to the first-level EU nomenclature of territorial units. We use multilevel modeling to explicitly account for the hierarchical nature of our data, respondents within regions and countries, and for understanding patterns of variation within and between regions. Main findings are that personal income matters more in poor regions than in rich regions, a pattern that still holds for regions within the same country. Being unemployed is negatively associated with life satisfaction even after controlled for income variation. Living in high unemployment regions does not alleviate the unhappiness of being out of work. After controlling for individual characteristics and modeling interactions, regional differences in life satisfaction still remain, confirming that regional dimension is relevant for life satisfaction.

In this paper we seek to put Irish poverty rates in a comparative European context. We do so in a context whereby the Irish economic boom and EU enlargement have led to increasing reservations being expressed regarding rates deriving from the EU "at risk of poverty" indicator. Our comparative analysis reports findings for both overall levels of poverty and variation by household reference person characteristics for this indicator and a consistent poverty measure for Ireland, the UK and five smaller European countries spanning a range of welfare regimes. Our findings demonstrate that the distinctiveness of Ireland's situation lies not in the overall levels of poverty per se but in the very high penalties associated with being in a household where the household reference person is a lone parent or excluded from the labour market.

Individually experienced demands of current social change in the domains of work and family were assessed in a large sample of adults from two Western and two Eastern federal states of Germany. For each domain of life, a cumulated index was computed representing the load with highly endorsed demands and this was compared across political regions, employment, partnership status and participants' level of education. Generally, a higher load of demands was found in Eastern Germany for participants who were unemployed or outside the labor market, those who were separated or divorced, and those with lower education. The political context and education aggravated the load of demands in the domain of work (but not in the domain of family) as indicated by significant two-way interactions between the different factors. The results prove that the demands of social change due to globalization or individualization differ in a systematic way across ecological niches.

The term deprivation is often used to refer to economic or social shortages in a given geographical area. This concept of deprivation has been identified for years using simple indicators such as income level, education and social class. One of the advantages of using simple indicators is the availability of data, since they come directly from sources of information like censuses and population registers. However, the main disadvantage of these indicators is their limited usefulness when measuring a concept as complex as deprivation with a single variable. One possible solution to this problem is using compound indices, made up of a combination of simple indicators. For years, the concept of material deprivation in Spain has been measured using indices or indicators imported from other countries. However, there are no studies that investigate if all of these variables are really related to material deprivation in Spain. In this context, the objective of this study is to create a synthetic index for material deprivation for the municipalities in Spain, bearing in mind the variables available from the Population and Housing Census. The index was built on a principal components factor analysis. The analysis showed two factors. The first factor showed a high positive correlation to the variables relating to illiteracy rate, unemployment rate and percentage of manual labourers, while the second factor was seen as highly positively correlated to the variables relating to the percentage of homes without access to a vehicle and the dependency index and also correlated, though negatively, to the percentage of foreigners between 16 and 49 who lived abroad in 1991. The variables that make up the first factor can be considered to be an approximation of the concept of deprivation in Spain. This study proposes a deprivation index made up of three simple indicators available from national information sources: percentage of illiteracy, percentage of unemployment and percentage of manual labourers. With this index, the criteria for measuring deprivation in Spanish municipalities can be unified and a comparison of the results of the different studies in our context facilitated.

Subjective well-being (SWB) has two components: affective well-being (AWB) and cognitive well-being (CWB). The present study demonstrated that AWB and CWB have are influenced by different factors in a nationally representative sample in Germany (N = 1053). Neuroticism was a stronger predictor of AWB than CWB. Unemployment and regional differences between the East and West of Germany were stronger predictors of CWB than AWB. In addition, the study demonstrated that shared evaluative biases in personality and SWB ratings inflate estimates of the effect size of personality. After controlling for this bias, the effects of environmental factors (unemployment, regional differences) on CWB were stronger than the effects of personality (neuroticism). The results demonstrate that AWB and CWB are distinct components of SWB and that research findings for one component may not generalize to the other component. The results also raise important questions about the weighing of the two components in the creation of subjective social indicators.

This research aims to investigate life satisfaction and happiness in Turkey. It extends the previous researches on subjective well-being (SWB) for Turkey by considering both happiness and life satisfaction. The previous researches for Turkey are local studies, and their findings cannot be generalized to the population of Turkish society. Given these facts, the factors that shape individual happiness and life satisfaction amongst Turkish people are determined using a representative survey of sociocultural and political change, World Values Survey (WVS). Some results obtained in this study are similar to typical findings such as a negative age effect, positive influences of income and health status, and a negative effect of unemployment. Contrary to the expectations, middle education has a negative direct effect on life satisfaction among females, and the upper education level is insignificant in the life satisfaction model. By comparing the correlates of happiness and life satisfaction across different years, this research aims to provide insights for policy makers and professionals to improve the perceived lives of Turkish people.

The focus of this paper is on a microeconomic analysis of the annual transition rate from temporary to permanent work of individual workers in Canada for the period 1999-2004. Given that a large proportion of temporary employment is involuntary, an understanding of the factors associated with the transition to permanent work may inform public policy. Factors associated with the transition, namely, human capital, household structures and labour market segmentation are analyzed using data from the Statistics Canada's "Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics" (SLID) for the period 1999-2004, limited to paid workers aged 20-64 years, excluding students. Among the key factors associated with the transitions are younger age and low unemployment rates. The analysis adds to the Canadian and international literature on transitions from temporary to permanent work.

Using Norway 1948-2004 as a case, I test whether changes in variables related to social integration can explain changes in suicide rates. The method is the Box-Jenkins approach to time-series analysis. Different aspects of family integration contribute significantly to the explanation of Norwegian suicide rates in this period. The estimated effect of separations is stronger than the effect of divorces, both for men and women, probably because separations are closer in time to the "real" marital breakup. This difference has not been demonstrated in earlier time-series research. Marriages decrease the suicide rates for males. The unemployment estimate for men has a negative sign, contributing to fewer suicides. Both increasing alcohol (beer) consumption and fewer marriages seem to be implicated in the soaring suicide rate for young men since 1970.

This article carries out a multidimensional analysis of welfare based on the social indicators approach aimed at assessing the quality of life in the 25 member countries of the European Union. It begins with description of the social indicators approach and provides some specifications on its most controversial points. It then specifies the principles on which the social indicators were selected, describes the indicators chosen, and details the methodology employed in the empirical analysis. Its results are subsequently explained, in terms of both quality of life as measured by the general and the partial quality of life (QOL) Indexes, and their correlations with the two indicators commonly employed in the EU context for welfare analyses--GDP per capita and Unemployment Rate. The article also reports further information obtained by plotting the QOL Index against GDP per capita, the Unemployment Rate, and an indicator of subjective well-being.

In this article we evaluate to what extent between-country differences in the probability of being "multidimensional" poor can be explained by a range of "domain-specific" indicators of welfare regime arrangements. To this end, a so-called micro-macro model is estimated, testing the "independent" effect of institutions, as opposed to alternative explanations such as between-country differences in population composition and economic affluence. Although we conclude that institutional arrangements do influence the risk of multidimensional poverty in the expected direction, we also find that bringing the "economy" back into the analyses has a non-trivial impact. Our results point at several avenues for further discussion and research. First, although the more elaborate welfare regimes generally do a better job in preventing poverty, the level of transfers is not always "proportional" to the general standard of living in these countries. Second, we only find partial confirmation for the often cited "negative" impact of labour market flexibility and the related "equality-jobs trade-off." While stricter employment regulations do reduce the poverty risk (be it only after controlling for economic affluence), flexibility in terms of the availability of fixed-term labour seems to be preferable to unemployment, even if at the individual level, labour market flexibility increases the likelihood of being poor quite severely.

This paper examines the suicide rates of 23 cities and counties in Taiwan from 1983 to 2001. We found that a combination of economic and social variables can significantly account for the tremendous variations in suicide rates across Taiwan's cities and counties over the last two decades. The level of income per capita in a region appears as the most important predictor of suicide rates. However, some sociological correlates (such as divorce rate) which were less powerful in explaining suicide rate variations in the earlier study appear to exert more significant influence over suicide rates when eight more recent years of information are added, as in the current study. This study also uncovered several gender differences in the determination of regional suicide rates, such as the proportion of elderly population in the region, and the impacts of earthquake and unemployment. Furthermore, this study confirmed the linkages between natural disaster (earthquake) and suicide, between economic and social miseries (unemployment and divorce, respectively) and suicide, as well as those between demographics (aboriginal and elderly sub-population groups) and suicide. This may help to identify high-risk groups or areas where suicide prevention and intervention efforts should be concentrated on or directed to. Lastly, the local suicide crisis-intervention agencies are found to be significantly effective in reducing suicide rates of the community they serve.

In Germany, processes can be observed that have long been out of keeping with the principle of equality of opportunity. Unemployment is concentrated in the structurally weak peripheral areas, in Eastern Germany in particular; emigration of young and better-educated people to the West is not diminishing, but contrary to expectation is again on the increase; aging processes have set in already, and when it comes to the provision of infrastructure, e.g. in the field of professional training, some regions are already suffering from considerable problems. These difficulties are frequently interpreted as differences between East and West and are explained away as problems resulting from reunification, such as the deindustrialization and restructuring of the economy and the enormous decline in the birth rate in Eastern Germany. Although these problems cannot just be attributed to social transformation and the birth rate crisis alone, being subject to more general processes of intensified globalization and the aging of society, the increasing regional disparities are rarely considered in the overall context of regional development patterns throughout Germany. Moreover, the difficulty of even obtaining data for purposes of comparison generally means that an international yardstick is lacking when regional developments are analyzed. The present study investigates regional disparities over a period of time in the light of subjective and objective indicators of the quality of life for individuals. To this end, we make use of data from the Wohlfahrtssurvey [Welfare Survey] from 1978 to 2001, among other sources. On the basis of the Euromodule that has been established at the WZB, we compare current regional patterns in Germany with those in other European countries. This approach makes it possible to provide information on the scale of regional disparities in various different countries, and to identify privileged and handicapped regions with reference to standards of living and the sense of wellbeing. The study's findings show that, in the past 25 years, welfare in Western Germany has evened out at a higher level, but currently a trend towards increasing economic disparity is discernible. In comparison with other European countries, on the other hand, the differences (regional differences) within Germany are comparatively slight.

Using data sets from both Sweden and Finland, which have been linked at the individual level, we analyse whether Finnish immigrants who lived in Sweden in 1990 were employed, non-employed, return-migrated, or dead by 2001. The aim is to see how they interrelate with socio-demographic characteristics, and to compare Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking immigrants in this respect. Multinomial logistic regression models reveal that there is great variation in the level of outcomes between the two language groups, but that the interrelation between socio-demographic factors and each outcome is fairly similar across outcomes and across language groups. It is foremost the Finnish-speaking male immigrants who experience problems, having on average two times higher odds of being either non-employed, return-migrated, or death, as compared with Swedish-speaking male immigrants. Social disadvantage may consequently not only take the form of poor labour market position, but also return-migration and death. The paper illustrates the need for separating subgroups of immigrants when one is interested in integrational success.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been utilized by academics and policy makers to indicate the economic well-being of the people. However, economic growth measures cannot capture fully the overall well-being of the people. This paper has tested quality of economic growth in Japan after World War II as to whether it has brought about positive outcome in the well-being of its citizens. Comparison between GDP and GPI (Genuine Progress Index) has revealed that GDP does not fit as well with people's life satisfaction trend as GPI. Prefecture-based rankings on GDP, Human Development Index (HDI) and Life Satisfaction have shown that there are clear gaps between objective measures and subjective measures to indicate the overall well-being of the people. Also, analysis on major determinants for people's life satisfaction reveals that older people, women, non-employed people, and those who live in subsidized housings felt satisfied with their life.

The expansion of higher education in Taiwan starting from the late 1980s has successfully raised the average level of education. Using the concept of the education Gini, we find that the educational inequality declined as average schooling rose during the period of 1976-2003. The impacts of a rising average schooling and a declining educational inequality are also tested empirically in this paper. The evidence supports that a higher level of average schooling will generate a lower income inequality. On the other hand, a lower educational inequality, as measured by education Gini coefficient, will also cause a lower income inequality. Skill-biased technological change that shifts the labor demand from unskilled workers toward skilled workers is the most likely cause for the rising income inequality in Taiwan. However, the trend of rising income inequality could be reversed due to possible future over-education and unemployment in the labor market.

Are certain groups of unemployed individuals hurt less by unemployment than others? This paper is an attempt to test the hypothesis that non-pecuniary costs of unemployment may vary between societies with different unemployment rates. Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, I show that households' perceptions of life satisfaction are inversely related to household unemployment for South Africa as to be expected in richer countries. Reported well-being levels are shown to be associated negatively with others' unemployment at the geographical cluster level for the employed. However, unemployment appears to hurt less for the household if unemployment rates in the local labour market are high.

Examining an aggregated sample (N=8800) of residents who responded to one of 16 surveys undertaken in Prince George, British Columbia in the period from November 1997 to February 2005, it was found that satisfaction with the quality of life of unemployed residents is lower than that of residents with Aboriginal backgrounds and that satisfaction with the quality of life of the latter is still lower than that of young people. Nevertheless, satisfaction with the quality of life of young people was significantly lower than that of the total sampled population, as well as that of the selected mid-life and retirement groups. Regarding predictors of our three global dependent variables (satisfaction with life as a whole and with the overall quality of life, and happiness) for the three groups (unemployed, Aboriginals and youth) and the total population, we found that the Aboriginal group was most different from all others. Satisfaction with one's own self-esteem was the most influential predictor of each global indicator for every group except Aboriginal residents. For the latter, self-esteem satisfaction was only the strongest predictor of satisfaction with the overall quality of life. The strongest predictor of life satisfaction for the Aboriginal group was satisfaction with friendships, and there were two domain satisfaction scores tied (friendships and living partner) for most influential predictors of happiness. Self-esteem satisfaction ranked second in strength of influence on Aboriginal happiness and life satisfaction.

This paper explores the connection between unemployment and subjective well-being in Finland using cross-sections for the years 1990, 1996 and 2000 from World Values Surveys. Interestingly, an unprecedented increase in the national unemployment rate (from 3 to 17%) did not produce a drop in the mean level of subjective well-being. Personally experiencing unemployment reduces life satisfaction, but does not have a significant effect on happiness in ordered logit estimation. However, generalized ordered logit estimation reveals that being unemployed has a negative effect on happiness at lower happiness scores, but no significant effect at high happiness levels.

Child poverty, as a critical indicator of the QOL, is intricately related to the social structure of the community. This hypothesis is explored for the 159 counties of Georgia for the year 2000. The influence of demographic, economic, family and health factors upon child poverty are explored through models of total, black and white child poverty. Factor analyses of factors uncovered by the models identify the social-structural features of counties in relation to child poverty. Counties considered "Deprived/rural" harbor child poverty, while counties described as "Business/money" and "Progressive/urban" bear a negative relationship to child poverty. Positively associated with child poverty are residential stability, unemployment, low educational achievement, youth and age dependency, single-parent female household heads with children, grandparent child care, and health disability of child, elders and of working-age persons. Structural factors militating against child poverty are persons with greater education, higher population density, out migration, larger married population, higher retail sales, larger middle class families, higher weekly wages, and other structural features of the county.

Unemployment and GDP are widely used as proxies for a broader concept of well-being in the European Union, especially at regional level. This paper asks whether such an approach is reasonable. Using data from a range of sources, it examines the association between unemployment, GDP and a number of alternative well-being indicators in five domains--material welfare, education, health, productive activity and social participation. It finds that GDP per capita is not a good proxy for wider regional well-being within a country, but that the regional unemployment rate performs reasonably well. Pooling fifteen member states together, however, regional GDP is a better predictor of a region's well-being than unemployment. This is because national GDP tells us more about how a country is doing overall than the national unemployment rate. These findings have implications for the European Council's decision to treat variation in the regional unemployment rates as the sole indicator of regional inequality within Member States, and for the allocation of the Structural Funds.

This paper examines the changes in the quality of life of poor households in Hong Kong in the late 1990s by analyzing their levels of expenditure, income security and poverty before and after 1997. Though there have been significant increases in the levels of expenditure among CSSA recipients, the expenditure among these poorest households in Hong Kong is still below that of non-CSSA recipients. Increasing poverty in Hong Kong is the result of increasing housing costs borne by these low expenditure households, who have to squeeze their expenditure on food and other items in order to meet the rising cost of housing. De-industrialisation and mass unemployment have given capital and the state unchecked authority to restructure the economy and to deregulate the labour market. Many low-income households have been hit hard as they faced redundancy, unemployment and wage-cuts after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. What jobs have been created are mostly part-time, temporary and contract jobs, and there has thus been an erosion in both job and income security. The quality of life of poor households is devastating not only in the sense that their living standards are low, but also that they are socially excluded from the mainstream of society.

This article examines the assumption that the social democratic welfare state is better than others in integrating immigrants into society, or at least that the comprehensive welfare state should compensate for the problems of labour market entry. A number of key indicators from The Living Conditions Survey are used to show that this assumption is inherently wrong. Immigrants do not have the same possibilities to enter the labour market, which is shown to have severe affects on other important areas of social and political citizenship. It stands clear that the social democratic welfare state, built and expanded on grounds of homogeneity, is insufficient to deal with changing circumstances in a plural society.

This article explores the relationship between individuals' satisfaction with their social life and global life satisfaction during periods of economic prosperity and crisis, using data from the Panel of Social Inequalities in Catalonia, Spain (PaD 2001–2012). The study also investigates how this relationship varies across different social origins. Catalonia is a pertinent context due to its significant increase in inequality and unemployment during the 2008 Economic Crisis, positioning it among the most affected regions in Europe. The findings reveal that satisfaction with one's social life matters for global life satisfaction, even after accounting for individual and macro characteristics. However, contrary to the initial expectations, the study demonstrates that satisfaction with one's social life becomes less influential for global life satisfaction during the macroeconomic crisis, particularly among individuals from middle and low social origins. Furthermore, while a strong positive relationship exists between satisfaction with one's social life and global life satisfaction during times of economic prosperity for all social groups, a robust negative relationship emerges in periods of macroeconomic crisis for individuals from high social origins. The article offers several potential explanations for these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether parents' entry into unemployment affects investment in children's education through their decision to provide public or private education for their children. The empirical approach makes use of longitudinal data from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua–PNAD contínua) and propensity-score matching with difference-in-difference methods. According to estimates, parents' unemployment reduces the probability of children's enrollment in the private educational system, which usually has better quality but high costs, instead of in the public educational system, which is offered for free but typically has poor quality. Thus, evidence suggests that reductions in household income as a consequence of unemployment can have impacts on the quality of human capital accumulated by children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy and practice link in conducting the disciplinary proceedings is pertinent. The primary goal of this manuscript is to contrast India's approach to government employee discipline with that of eight other advanced nations. The gap between policy and practice in disciplinary proceedings involving accused employees is critically examined in the paper. Nonetheless, the main focus of this research is to investigate how unjust proceedings have affected society. With the help of real-time forensics, this article evaluates the gap between the employee suspension policy and practice. The forensics divulges the abuse of power in the disciplinary process sufficient to compel this article to critically highlight the adverse impacts of the detrimental practice on society. Informed personal interviews with the stakeholders (N = 34) reveal that the employee suspension practice deviates from the policy. Employee suspension evolved as a "state-sanctioned oppression", a "cruel joke to unemployment", and a "safe instrument to screen the offence of the powerful". The two significant findings of the study are, firstly, faulty disciplinary practice increasing social injustice, unemployment and resultant youth violence, and secondly, usage of suspension as an instrument to suppress or screen the traces of offence. Relying on the definitions provided in the verdicts of Indian courts, the manuscript calls for a revisit to the practice in the context of misconduct, malpractice, and victimization. We choose research areas that have not received much attention and create an agenda for the future to decrease the discrepancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence shows a significant increase in the number of high-skilled mobile workers in the EU. Yet, little is known about the experience of unemployed female high-skilled intra-EU mobile jobseekers regarding the search for employment and wellbeing as part of labour market integration. This paper uses qualitative data collected between 2014 and 2015 (via an online survey) to explore female experience considering the challenges and opportunities on the path to employment. Findings underlined two main features: first, the inadequate availability, relevant information and access to support services for high-skilled workers; and second, a deficit of wellbeing and satisfaction by respondents amid their intra-EU mobility path, linked to circumstances of unemployment and aspirations before movement. The paper draws on these findings to advocate for the creation of work-placement programs as a "path to employment" tailored to female high-skilled intra-EU mobile jobseekers and the inclusion of psycho-social assistance through counselling and peer-support groups within standing employment services for jobseekers. These two measures are relevant in promoting female high-skilled EU mobile workers' participation in the labour market, thus preventing loss of talent, long-term unemployment, deskilling, and encouraging better matching schemes, averting social isolation and loss of wellbeing. Persistent unemployment and deskilling can have an impact on social welfare, in particular costs related to healthcare (i.e. mental health). According to the author, wherever possible, wellbeing is to be considered, when making a cost-benefit analysis of the experiences of high-skilled mobile workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment is a major risk factor of poverty and employment is regarded key to overcoming it. The present study examines how the income poverty risk of unemployed individuals changes in the short and medium term, when they take up work, and whether the effects differ according to the type of employment. The focus is on permanent and fixed-term job contracts, as the political promotion of fixed-term employment has often been framed as an effort to reduce long-term unemployment and poverty. Drawing on longitudinal data from the German panel study 'Labour Market and Social Security' (PASS) 2010–18, we apply a first difference estimator with asymmetric effects to examine the effect of starting a job out of unemployment on income poverty risks in the subsequent four years. Strikingly, starting in a fixed-term and permanent contract have similarly strong and lasting poverty-reducing effects in the short and medium term. Thus, with regard to risks of income poverty, starting a permanent job does not appear more beneficial than starting a fixed-term job for unemployed persons. We discuss the reasons for this finding and also explore how the poverty-reducing effects of transitions from unemployment to fixed-term versus permanent employment vary by household type, occupation, working time and firm size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the effect of unemployment on mental health, using data from Finnish municipalities for the period 2002–2019. We measure mental illness using a mental morbidity index, as well as mental health care utilization and the use of antidepressants. There are significant differences across municipalities in Finland in both prevalence of mental health issues and illnesses, along with unemployment. Establishing a causal link between these two variables is challenging because of their reverse causality and joint determination. Using instrumental variable estimation, we establish a causal effect from unemployment to mental health. We present a strong connection between unemployment and mental health, especially for males between 25 and 64 years of age. Similar connection is not found among younger or older males, nor among females. Our findings are robust, since the results hold for various mental health measures. Our results reflect the possibility of differing mental health effects across the sources of unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Spain, the youth unemployment rate is one of the highest in the European Union. With the pandemic caused by Covid-19, young people face high unemployment rates and are more vulnerable to a decrease in labour demand. This paper analyses and predicts youth unemployment using Google Trends indices in Spain for the period between the first quarter of 2004 and the second quarter of 2021, being the first work to carry out this study for Spain and the first to use the regional approach for the country. Vector autoregressive Bayesian models and vector error correction models have been used for national data, and Bayesian panel data models and fixed effects model for regional data. The results confirm that forecasts based on Google Trends data are more accurate in predicting the youth unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the experienced well-being of employed and unemployed workers. We use the survey-adapted Day Reconstruction Method of the Innovation Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study to analyze the role of the employment status for well-being, incorporating time use. We use the novel P-index to summarize the average share of pleasurable minutes on a day and show that in contrast to evaluative life satisfaction the unemployed experiences more pleasurable minutes due to the absence of working episodes. Hence, we examine working episodes in depth. While working is among the activities with the highest propensities for an unpleasant experience, it is also among the most meaningful activities. We show that meaning is a central non-monetary determinant for pleasure at work and find that pleasure during work and job satisfaction have a comparable association with meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment impairs individuals' well-being and health and there is some empirical evidence showing that macroeconomic conditions can moderate these effects. This paper goes a step further and investigates differences in how macroeconomic indicators of European countries' economic situation relate to individual subjective health and well-being, and also moderate the relationship between individual labour market exclusion and these outcomes across age groups: young individuals (aged 15–29), prime working age adults (aged 30–49, base category) and pre-retirement age adults (aged 50–64). We used two different macroeconomic indicators to define macroeconomic situation: country-level unemployment rate and gross domestic product (GDP). Both indicators were disaggregated into long-term economic trend and business cycle shocks using Hodrick–Prescott filtering to allow distinguishing between expected and unexpected change in macroeconomic circumstances. We used the European Social Survey individual-level data from 35 European countries for 2002–2014. Multi-level analysis with three levels were run for men and women separately. Results revealed differences in how individual-level unemployment related to well-being depending on the age group, with pre-retirement age group adults' health and well-being suffering the most. Also, macroeconomic indicators were found to moderate the relationship between individual-level unemployment and subjective health and well-being with some noticeable differences between age groups, and with GDP trend having the most sizeable influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's place in the labor market has been a topic of interest to the European Union and national governments for many years. This study analyzes young people who are Not in Employment nor in Education or Training (NEET) and Youth Unemployment (YU) in the European Union member states, through data collected over a period of sixteen years, considering the influence of some macroeconomic factors through an hidden Markov model. This approach is based on maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters, and provides a dynamic classification of the countries into clusters representing different levels of the phenomena. We discover three clusters of countries, and we show that whereas Italy was the worst performing country in terms of both NEETs and YU, the Czech Republic was the best performing country in reducing NEETs, and Poland and Slovakia were the best performing in reducing YU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite comparable living standards and a nearly universal healthcare provision, there are large cross-country differences in population health in the European Union. More than half of this variation remains unexplained after accounting for macro-level factors. This paper investigates how individual-level differences in demographic characteristics, education, labour market factors and income shape the prevalence of poor self-assessed health in the EU. A semi-parametric decomposition approach is used, which relies on constructing synthetic distributions of health that would prevail in each country if they had similar distributions of socio-economic factors as the country with the best self-assessed population health—Ireland. We find clustering of decomposition results within EU regions. When compared with Ireland, differences in the examined factors explain up to a third of excess poor health in the Southern and Central and Eastern European countries. On the other hand, we could not explain health differences between Ireland and the other Western European countries, which tend to have poorer self-assessed population health but more favourable distributions of socio-economic factors. Cultural differences in reporting styles may be responsible for this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some studies using either objective or subjective indicators, find that self-employed individuals are less likely to be or to report being skill-mismatched in comparison with salaried employees. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the transition from salaried employment to self-employment on self-reported skill mismatches. To do so, this article uses eight waves of the European Community Household Panel covering the period 1994–2001. The panel data nature of this rich dataset, allows us to track individuals over time and measure self-reported skill-mismatches before and after the transition for the same individuals, using as the comparison group those individuals who remain in salaried employment during the whole sample period. Our empirical findings indicate that those individuals who transit from salaried employment to self-employment reduce their probability to report being skill-mismatched after the transition. Interestingly, we also observe that this effect vanish if the transition is done from an unemployment status, and that the effect is quite heterogenous across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between the unemployment rate and the fertility rate in a number of European countries along with Japan and the US. We use fractional integration and cointegration techniques to establish this long run relationship. The analysis shed some light on the degree of persistence of the series, and on whether policy actions are required for highly persistent series. The evidence suggests that these two variables (unemployment and fertility rates) are not related in the long run. However, in the short run, assuming that unemployment rate is weakly exogenous, the coefficient relating the two variables is found to be negative in four countries: the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a protocol to measure the cost of unemployment by taking into account three different aspects: incidence, severity and hysteresis. Incidence refers to the conventional unemployment rate; severity takes into account both unemployment duration and the associated income loss; and hysteresis refers to the probability of remaining unemployed. The cost of unemployment is regarded as a welfare loss, which is measured by a utilitarian social welfare function whose arguments are the individual disutilities of unemployed workers. Each individual disutility is modelled as a function of income loss, unemployment duration and hysteresis. The resulting formula is simple and easy to understand and implement. We apply this assessment protocol to the Spanish labour market, focusing on the regional differences and using the official register of unemployed workers compiled by the Public Employment Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]