Unemployment sequences and the risk of poverty: from counting duration to contextualizing sequences

verfasst von

Matthias Pohlig

Abstract

Research has consistently shown that unemployment is a strong predictor for income poverty. So far, most studies have focused on the duration of unemployment to account for differences in income poverty. However, this practice may mistreat trajectories which conform less to the norm of continuous full-time employment before unemployment. In this article, I first develop a generalized framework which contextualizes unemployment sequences according to duration as well as timing and order. Second, I apply a sequence analysis to longitudinal data from five European welfare states—Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden—using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Thereby, I construct a typology of unemployment sequences which includes some non-standard types of unemployment sequences. These sequences contain inactivity, part-time employment and self-employment spells and have an increased poverty risk. Thus, the sequence-based framework and the sequence analysis are able to contextualize unemployment sequences better than the conventional measure of unemployment duration.

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Bremen
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Socio-economic review

Band

19

Seiten

273-305

Anzahl der Seiten

33

ISSN

1475-1461

Publikationsdatum

01.2021

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Volkswirtschaftslehre, Ökonometrie und Finanzen (insg.), Soziologie und Politikwissenschaften

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 8 – Anständige Arbeitsbedingungen und wirtschaftliches Wachstum

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwz004 (Zugang: Geschlossen)