Schneider Daniel, Harknett Kristen, Gailliot Annette
Harvard Kennedy School, USA.
University of California, San Francisco, USA.
Soc Sci Res. 2024 Nov;124:103059. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2024.103059. Epub 2024 Sep 30.
COVID-19 precipitated sharp job losses, concentrated in the service sector. Prior research suggests that such shocks would negatively affect health and wellbeing. However, the nature of the pandemic crisis was distinct in ways that may have mitigated any such negative effects, and historic expansions in unemployment insurance (UI) may have buffered workers from negative health consequences. We draw on employer-employee linked cross-sectional (N = 15,219) and panel (N = 3307) data from service sector workers to estimate the effects of job loss on health and wellbeing during COVID-19. Using employer fixed-effects, lagged dependent variables, and models that focus on job loss due to establishment closure to minimize confounding, we find negative effects of unemployment on health and wellbeing. However, in periods when UI was most generous or in cases where UI fully replaced pre-job loss wages, unemployed workers who received UI were no worse off than those who remained employed. Although UI protected against worsening health, receiving generous UI benefits did not confer a health advantage relative to working at the height of the pandemic.
新冠疫情导致了急剧的失业，且集中在服务业。先前的研究表明，此类冲击会对健康和幸福产生负面影响。然而，这场大流行危机的性质在某些方面有所不同，可能减轻了任何此类负面影响，而且失业保险（UI）的历史性扩张可能使工人免受负面健康后果的影响。我们利用服务业工人的雇主-雇员关联横截面数据（N = 15219）和面板数据（N = 3307），来估计新冠疫情期间失业对健康和幸福的影响。通过使用雇主固定效应、滞后因变量以及聚焦于因企业关闭导致的失业以尽量减少混杂因素的模型，我们发现失业对健康和幸福有负面影响。然而，在失业保险最为慷慨的时期，或者在失业保险完全替代失业前工资的情况下，领取失业保险的失业工人并不比仍在就业的工人情况更糟。尽管失业保险防止了健康状况恶化，但相对于在疫情高峰期工作而言，领取高额失业保险福利并没有带来健康优势。
