One of the main benefits of living in a partnership could be shared expenditure and insurance against adverse life events, including unemployment, but researchers at the Università Bocconi, Milan and the University of Lausanne, have found that unemployment increases the chances of couples separating.
Results showed that the annual separation rate almost doubles after an unemployment spell: it increases from 0.9% to 1.6% per year.
Time matters during unemployment
The study analysed UK data from Understanding Society and German data from the Socio-Economic Panel. By using this longitudinal data, the team found the longer the spell of unemployment, the more likely it is that separation occurs.
The separation rate increased by 0.5 percentage points—from below 1% to above 1.5%—in the 2 years following an unemployment spell. The experience of unemployment increased the risk of the couple breaking up by 50%.
When they looked at who becomes unemployed the researchers also found that it didn’t matter whether it was the man or the woman in the couple who lost their job, the risk of separation was the same if that person was the main earner of the family.
The study said, “In the 1990s and early 2000s, men’s unemployment used to be more detrimental to couple stability than women’s unemployment in Germany and the UK… in both countries today, an unemployment spell appears to be more disruptive for couples if it is experienced by the main earner—the breadwinner—than the secondary earner.”
The research also found that lower earners were more likely to separate than couples in high-income households, both before and after an unemployment spell. Also, despite more generous unemployment benefits in Germany, the experience of unemployment was almost—but not quite—as destabilizing for couples in Germany as in the UK. This suggests that it is not solely reduced financial resources that turn unemployment into a stressful and potentially disruptive event.
The study said, “The key message is that rather than pulling couples together, unemployment makes couples more vulnerable—regardless which partner becomes unemployed and regardless of a household’s economic resources.”
Read the full paper: The effect of unemployment on couples separating in Germany and the UK
EmploymentFamily and householdsIncome and expenditureMoney and financesSocial mobility
