The Consequences of the Great Recession: Contextual and Individual Unemployment and the Educational Effect on Union Dissolution

Maike Van Damme , Centre D'Estudis Demografics (CED)
Pau Baizan-Munoz, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and ICREA
Clara Cortina, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

We investigate the consequences of the Great Recession for union dissolution in Europe, paying particular attention to the interaction of unemployment with educational attainment. Who was hit the hardest by the economic crisis? Using the EU-SILC for 25 countries for the period 2005-2015, we estimate simultaneously probits for union formation and dissolution. We run country fixed effects models with contextual and individual level unemployment effects and the interaction of such ‘crisis’ effects with education. We find that selection into union formation hardly affects our estimates of unemployment effects on union dissolution. We find a U-shape relationship between macro-level unemployment and separation. Moreover, on the individual-level, we find an unemployment effect for both men, which is especially strong for the highly educated. And we find an unemployment effect for women, but only if she is middle high educated. Plausible reasons for these unemployment effects are stress due to economic hardship, economic insecurity, and normative conflict.

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 Presented in Session 96. Union Dissolution 1