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Unemployment Insurance and the Family: Heterogeneous Effects of Benefit Generosity on Reemployment and Economic Precarity

By on August 16, 2024 in Articles

Ursina Kuhn, Debra Hevenstone, Leen Vandecasteele, Samin Sepahniya, Dorian Kessler

Sociological Science August 16, 2024
10.15195/v11.a24

Abstract

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We investigate how unemployment insurance generosity impacts reemployment and economic precarity by family type. With Swiss longitudinal administrative data and a regression discontinuity design using potential benefit duration, we examine differences between single households and primary and secondary or equal earners, as well as differences by gender and presence of children. Less generous unemployment insurance (shorter potential benefit duration) speeds up reemployment for all family types during the period with benefit cuts whereas longer-term effects are stronger for single households, secondary and equal earners, and those without children. Economic precarity increases for singles, single-parents, and primary earners during the period with lower benefits though there are no long-term effects. We argue that those with higher financial responsibility (i.e., primary earners or those with children) face pressure to find jobs irrespective of benefit generosity whereas those with lower financial responsibility (i.e., secondary or equal earners and those without children) have more capacity to react.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Ursina Kuhn: Social Work, Bern University of Applied Sciences. Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS)
E-mail: ursina.kuhn@fors.unil.ch

Debra Hevenstone: SocialWork, Bern University of Applied Sciences
E-mail: debra.hevenstone@bfh.ch

Leen Vandecasteele: Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (LIVES), Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne
E-mail: leen.vandecasteele@unil.ch

Samin Sepahniya: Social Work and Health, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
E-mail: samin.sepahniya@fhnw.ch

Dorian Kessler: Social Work, Bern University of Applied Sciences
E-mail: dorian.kessler@bfh.ch

Acknowledgements: This article was written as part of the project Family Models and Unemployment (grant number 176371) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). We would like to acknowledge the SNSF project “Coupled Inequalities. Trends and Welfare State Differences in the Role of Partner’s Socio-Economic Resources for Employment Careers” (grant number 100017_182406) and the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (LIVES) for fruitful collaboration and exchange. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which helped to clarify the paper. We also thank the SNSF for open access funding of this article.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: The code for data analysis, data description, and instructions on how data can be requested for replication is provided on SwissUbase. https://doi.org/10.25597/tm2k-jf98

  • Citation: Kuhn, Ursina, Debra Hevenstone, Leen Vandecasteele, Samin Sepahniya and Dorian Kessler. 2024. “Unemployment Insurance and the Family: Heterogeneous Effects of Benefit Generosity on Reemployment and Economic Precarity.” Sociological Science 11: 649-679.
  • Received: July 4, 2024
  • Accepted: March 18, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Vida Maralani
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a24


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Deciding to Wait: Partnership Status, Economic Conditions, and Pregnancy during the Great Recession

By on February 20, 2017 in Articles

Christine Percheski, Rachel Tolbert Kimbro

Sociological Science, February 20, 2017
DOI 10.15195/v4.a8

Abstract
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The Great Recession was associated with reduced fertility in the United States. Many questions about the dynamics underlying this reduction remain unanswered, however, including whether reduced fertility rates were driven by decreases in intended or unplanned pregnancies. Using restricted data from the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 4,630), we exploit variation in state economic indicators to assess the impact of economic conditions on the likelihood of an intended pregnancy, an unplanned pregnancy, or no pregnancy for adult women without a college education. We focus on variations by partnership and marital status. Overall, we find that worse economic conditions were predictive of a lower risk of unplanned pregnancy. Women’s odds of intended pregnancy did not, however, respond uniformly to economic conditions but varied by marital status. When economic conditions were poor, married women had lower odds of intended pregnancy, whereas cohabiting women had greater odds of intended pregnancy.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Christine Percheski: Department of Sociology and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University
Email: c-percheski@northwestern.edu

Rachel Tolbert Kimbro: Department of Sociology, Rice University
Email: rtkimbro@rice.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty Emerging Scholars Family Complexity Small Grant program.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Percheski, Christine, and Rachel Tolbert Kimbro. 2017. “Deciding to Wait: Partnership Status, Economic Conditions, and Pregnancy during the Great Recession.” Sociological Science 4: 176-195.
  • Received: September 23, 2016
  • Accepted: January 9, 2017
  • Editors: Jesper B. Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v4.a8


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Time as a Network Good: Evidence from Unemployment and the Standard Workweek

By on February 14, 2014 in Articles

Cristobal Young, Chaeyoon Lim

Sociological Science, February 18, 2014
DOI 10.15195/v1.a2

Abstract
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We argue that time is a network good: its value depends on the number of social others who have the same schedule of time available. We demonstrate this in a comparative analysis of how the standard workweek shapes the social time and emotional well-being of workers and the unemployed. Drawing on two independent data sets, with more than half a million respondents, we show that both workers and the unemployed experience remarkably similar increases in emotional well-being on weekends and have similar declines in well-being when the workweek begins. The unemployed look forward to weekends much the same as workers. This is in large part because social time increases sharply on weekends for both workers and the unemployed. Weekend well-being is not due to time off work per se but rather is a collectively produced social good stemming from widely shared free time on weekends. The unemployed gain comparatively little benefit from their time off during the week, when others go to work.

Cristobal Young: Department of Sociology, Stanford University. E-mail: cristobal.young@stanford.edu

Chaeyoon Lim: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. E-mail: clim@ssc.wisc.edu

Supplemental Materials

  • Citation: Young, Cristobal, and Chaeyoon Lim. 2014. “Time as a Network Good: Evidence from Unemployment and the Standard Workweek.” Sociological Science 1: 10-27.
  • Received: October 16, 2013
  • Accepted: October 24, 2013
  • Editors: Stephen L. Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v1.a2

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