Gebel Michael, Voßemer Jonas
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Institute of Social Sciences, Faculty I, A6, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany.
Soc Sci Med. 2014 May;108:128-36. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.02.039. Epub 2014 Feb 25.
This article investigates the effects of transitions between employment and unemployment on health. It also addresses the question of whether or not the widespread use of temporary employment has altered the positive health effects of employment. Drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the period 1995-2010, we apply difference-in-differences propensity score matching to identify the direct causal effects of unemployment and reemployment on psychological and physical health. This combination of two approaches towards causal inference controls for both unobserved fixed effects and observable differences in a flexible semi-parametric specification. Our sample includes persons between the ages of 16-54 who have at least experienced one respective employment transition (treatment groups) or are continuously employed or unemployed (control groups). The results show that only psychological but not physical health is causally affected by the respective employment transitions. Specifically, the effects of unemployment and reemployment are of similar size, highlighting the importance of reemployment in compensating unemployment's negative impact on psychological health. In contrast, health selection and confounding seem to be important determinants of the cross-sectional association between unemployment and physical health. Carrying out separate analyses for permanent and temporary workers, we shed new light on the health effects of temporary employment. It has been argued that the rise of temporary employment has introduced a new inequality in the world of work, blurring the line between employment and unemployment. However, contrary to our expectations we find that both employment transitions have effects of a similar size for permanent and temporary workers. In sum, our results highlight two points. First, longitudinal research is needed to properly evaluate the health effects of unemployment, reemployment, and temporary employment. Second, compared to temporary employment, unemployment is still the greater threat to individuals' psychological health.
本文研究就业与失业之间的转换对健康的影响。它还探讨了临时就业的广泛使用是否改变了就业对健康的积极影响这一问题。利用1995 - 2010年德国社会经济面板的数据，我们应用差分倾向得分匹配法来确定失业和再就业对心理和身体健康的直接因果效应。这两种因果推断方法的结合，在灵活的半参数规范中控制了未观察到的固定效应和可观察到的差异。我们的样本包括16 - 54岁之间至少经历过一次相应就业转换的人（治疗组）或持续就业或失业的人（对照组）。结果表明，只有心理健康而非身体健康受到相应就业转换的因果影响。具体而言，失业和再就业的影响大小相似，突出了再就业在补偿失业对心理健康负面影响方面的重要性。相比之下，健康选择和混杂因素似乎是失业与身体健康之间横截面关联的重要决定因素。对长期工和临时工进行单独分析后，我们对临时就业的健康影响有了新的认识。有人认为，临时就业的增加在就业领域引入了一种新的不平等，模糊了就业和失业之间的界限。然而，与我们的预期相反，我们发现这两种就业转换对长期工和临时工的影响大小相似。总之，我们的结果突出了两点。第一，需要进行纵向研究来正确评估失业、再就业和临时就业对健康的影响。第二，与临时就业相比，失业对个人心理健康仍然是更大的威胁。
