915
Views
2
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Impact of unemployment on happiness in the United States

&
Pages 1049-1052 | Published online: 01 Oct 2018
 

ABSTRACT

This study considers the level of demonstrated happiness and unhappiness, the latter measured by the conditional probability of committing suicide within groups that are facing a higher unemployment rate and those that are not. Using individual-level US data from 1989 to 2004, our findings indicate that individuals have lower rates of suicide or are ‘happy’ when they live in a state that has lower unemployment rate.

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Among many others, refer to Daly, Wilson, and Johnson (Citation2013) for the study of this issue in the US, Bokerman and Ilmakunnas (Citation2009) for Finland, and Ahn, García, and Jimeno (Citation2004) for Denmark and Netherlands. Also, see Hamermesh and Soss (Citation1974) for theoretical model on this topic.

2 See Milner et al. (Citation2013) and Oyesanya, Lopez-Morinigo, and Dutta (Citation2015) for a survey of literature on suicide.

4 We also run separate regressions for each year within our sample in which case state dummies cannot be included because unemployment rate is invariant within state. In these cases, the coefficient on unemployment rate is always negative. When compared to the pooled logit results reported here, such negative coefficients could stem from state-level unobserved heterogeneity.

5 The results are consistent when incorporating the state-level deaths due to mental illness.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 53.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 205.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.