مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد رضایت از زندگی و بیکاری در ترکیه – اسپرینگر 2017

Over the last few decades, the topic of subjective well-being has spurred much interest from economists. Accordingly, there has been an increasing recognition that objective indicators of economic progress should be complemented by subjective measures of how people evaluate their lives (Diener and Seligman 2004; Frey and Stutzer 2002). Subjective well-being is defined as people’s evaluations of their own lives (Diener 2000). Measures of subjective well-being refer to an individual’s evaluation of his/her life and different domains of it such as family, health, and finance. Many countries collect data on how people asses their lives and several aspects of their lives through nationally representative surveys undertaken by statistical offices. Typically, these surveys gather data on happiness through questions such as ‘Taken all together, how would you say things are these days, would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?’. Alternatively, the question would ask about the overall satisfaction of the respondent with his/her life. The term ‘happiness’ is generally used interchangeably with well-being and life satisfaction. Research suggests that in addition to its genetic component, half of the variation in subjective well-being (hereafter, SWB) is due to differences in external factors (Weiss et al. 2008). Existing studies, mostly on developed countries, report that demographic and economic variables such as (absolute) income, education, and marital status are important for SWB.1 It is well-documented that the unemployed, on average, report lower levels of wellbeing than those with a job. In addition to the fall in well-being due to the loss of income, the loss of non-pecuniary benefits (such as self-esteem and self-confidence) associated with employment is detrimental to well-being.2 A separate line of literature examines the relationship between individual well-being and unemployment among relevant others, i.e. the ‘social norm’ effect of unemployment. Unemployment as a social norm implies that the effect of an individual’s own unemployment on well-being is alleviated by a higher level of unemployment among relevant others (Clark 2003). Accordingly, surrounding unemployment lowers the well-being of the employed but has a much smaller impact on the well-being of the unemployed. In environments with a strong social norm to work, jobless individuals may experience a fall in well-being due to lack of acceptance and approval from others. This fall is expected to be smaller if unemployment is the norm.