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

authored by

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.

External Organisation(s)

University of Bremen
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg

Type

Article

Journal

Socio-economic review

Volume

19

Pages

273-305

No. of pages

33

ISSN

1475-1461

Publication date

01.2021

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all), Sociology and Political Science

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwz004 (Access: Closed)