Unemployed people consistently report worse health than employed people do. However, different support measures can potentially buffer the impact of unemployment on health. The aim of this study is to assess to what extent two such measures –unemployment insurance (UI) and individual social relationships – relates to self-rated ill health among unemployed people in Europe, and if unemployment insurance is a more important health resource for those with weak social relationships. The study uses cross-sectional individual-level data from European Social Survey (round 6-9) in 26 European countries combined with measures of different aspects of unemployment insurance policy from the SPIN database. The sample was restricted to unemployed individuals in the ages 18-65 years. Multilevel linear probability models were used to assess the probability of having poor health. The results showed that having weak social relationships was related to a slightly higher probability of having poor health but did not find unemployment insurance to be related to health, regardless of the type of unemployment insurance measure studied. However, when excluding one outlier country, unemployment insurance generosity was associated with a small decreased probability of having poor health in the least generous countries. Furthermore, UI coverage moderated the relation between social relationships and ill health – increasing UI coverage was more important for the health of those with weak social relationships compared to those with more comprehensive relationships. However, because the results were sensitive to the variable operationalization of social relationships as well as the included countries, the main takeaway is that the present study found very limited evidence of unemployment insurance generosity being related to ill health among the unemployed in Europe.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-231133 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Andersson, Carolina |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Sociologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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