IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bru/bruedp/02-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unemployment Alters the Set-Point for Life Satisfaction

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew E. Clark
  • Yannis Georgellis

Abstract

According to set-point theories of subjective well-being, people react to events, but then return to initial levels of happiness and satisfaction over time. We test this idea by examining reaction and adaptation to unemployment in a 15-year longitudinal study. In accordance with set-point theory, individuals first reacted strongly to unemployment and then shifted back toward their former (or “baseline”) levels of life satisfaction. However, on average, individuals did not completely return to their former levels of life satisfaction, even after they became re-employed. The findings suggests that even a short period of unemployment can cause an alteration in a person’s long-term set-point. Within-person analyses showed, however, that there are considerable individual differences in reaction and adaptation to unemployment. Although there was substantial stability in life satisfaction over the years, unemployment did influence long-term levels, thus suggesting that in addition to personality, long-term subjective well-being can also be influenced by life circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew E. Clark & Yannis Georgellis, 2002. "Unemployment Alters the Set-Point for Life Satisfaction," Economics and Finance Discussion Papers 02-16, Economics and Finance Section, School of Social Sciences, Brunel University.
  • Handle: RePEc:bru:bruedp:02-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/329/efwps/02-16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bru:bruedp:02-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John.Hunter (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.