The impact of losing your job : unemployment and Influences from market, family, and state on economic well-being in the US and Germany / Martin Ehlert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ehlert, Martin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Unemployment--United States.

Unemployment.

Economic security.

United States.

Unemployment--Germany.

Germany.

Economic security--United States.

Economic security--Germany.

Physical Description:

264 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam Univ Press, [2016]

Summary:

Losing a job has, in modern societies, been one of the most important causes of downward social mobility. Recent debates suggest that nowadays, workers face even greater risks on the labor market than before. Against this background, The Impact of Losing Your Job: Unemployment and Influences from Market, Family, and State on Economic Well-Being in the US and Germany provides an in-depth analysis of economic insecurity due to unemployment in the US and Germany. Building on life course sociology, it considers influences from market, family, and welfare state on the impact of losing a job. Household panel data has been used to analyze the occurrence of losing a job, its consequences, and the coping strategies found among the working-age population between the 1980s and the late 2000s. Both in the US and in Germany, economic insecurity due to losing a job is unevenly distributed among social strata. Groups that are already disadvantaged lose their job more often and have fewer private resources to cope with the loss. However, the German welfare state mitigates this disparity to a higher degree than its American counterpart. Yet economic insecurity associated with risks on the labor market increased in Germany while we see on such trend in the US prior to the Great Recession. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction 15

2 Life Courses and Trigger Events: Theoretical Considerations 35

2.1 Institutional influences on the life course 37

2.2 Family influences on the life course 42

2.3 Unemployment dynamics over the life course 46

2.4 Embedding the trigger events approach in the life course 50

2.5 Expectations about differences in economic insecurity due to job loss 65

3 Welfare State Institutions and Labor Market Trends 69

3.1 Social policy 69

3.2 Family policy and tax policy 73

3.3 Labor market regulation and labor market structure 75

3.4 Labor market trends 76

4 Data and Methods 83

4.1 Empirical strategy to estimate the consequences of job loss 84

4.2 Data sets 92

4.3 Operationalization 96

5 The Incidence of Job Loss and Unemployment 109

5.1 Descriptive statistics on the incidence of job loss 110

5.2 What causes higher rates of job loss among singles and single mothers? 127

5.3 Summary: Market, family, and state influences on job loss and unemployment 138

6 Income Trajectories After Job Loss 143

6.1 Theoretical expectations and hypotheses 143

6.2 Comparing individuals with and without job loss 149

6.3 Country specific income trajectories 157

6.4 Differences between households 162

6.5 Differences between social strata 168

6.6 Trends over time 176

6.7 Summary: The impact of job loss embedded in the life course 181

7 Household Strategies to Buffer job Loss 187

7.1 Hypotheses 188

7.2 Partner's labor force participation before job loss 193

7.3 Incidence of the AWE 198

7.4 Magnitude of the AWE 211

7.5 Summary: The added worker effect in linked life courses 219

8 Conclusion 225

8.1 Key findings 228

8.2 Significance of the findings for current debates 236.

ISBN:

9789089648051

9089648054

OCLC:

921866000