Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Germany; University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), Germany.
Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Germany.
Soc Sci Res. 2020 Feb;86:102379. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.102379. Epub 2019 Nov 6.
Social integration is considered crucially important for understanding the adverse effect of unemployment on mental health. Social integration is assumed to either bring about the health effects of unemployment (causal pathway hypothesis) or shield the unemployed from such effects (buffering hypothesis). However, there is scarce empirical evidence, especially based on panel data, regarding these two hypotheses. In our analysis, we use up to ten waves of the "Labour Market and Social Security" (PASS) German panel study and apply fixed effects panel regressions to account for unobserved confounders. We test several indicators that cover different aspects of social integration (numbers of strong and weak ties, conflict in the household, employed friends, general and job search-specific social support). We find no empirical support for the causal pathway hypothesis and only very limited support for the buffering hypothesis.
社会融合被认为对于理解失业对心理健康的不利影响至关重要。社会融合被认为要么带来失业的健康影响（因果途径假说），要么使失业者免受这种影响（缓冲假说）。然而，关于这两个假说，几乎没有经验证据，特别是基于面板数据的证据。在我们的分析中，我们使用了德国面板研究的“劳动力市场和社会保障”（PASS）的最多十次波次，并应用固定效应面板回归来解释未观察到的混杂因素。我们测试了几个指标，这些指标涵盖了社会融合的不同方面（强关系和弱关系的数量、家庭冲突、有工作的朋友、一般和求职特定的社会支持）。我们没有发现因果途径假说的经验支持，只有非常有限的缓冲假说的支持。
