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Welke handelings- en interventiestrategieën van gemeenten dragen bij aan perspectief op werk en een verbetering van het welbevinden en vertrouwen van mensen in de bijstand? Zes gemeenten – Groningen, Utrecht, Tilburg, Wageningen, Deventer en Nijmegen – hebben de afgelopen jaren (van 1 oktober 2017 tot 31 december 2019) unieke randomised controlled trials uitgevoerd in de bijstand. De volgende (combinatie van) interventies zijn onderzocht: ontheffing van re-integratieverplichtingen, intensivering van begeleiding en vrijlating van bijverdiensten. Er is zowel gekeken naar uitstroom naar werk als naar baanzoekintensiteit, welbevinden, zelfredzaamheid en sociaal vertrouwen. De uitstroom naar werk is bij alle interventies niet lager dan de huidige aanpak, terwijl de uitstroom naar deeltijdwerk in sommige gemeenten hoger is. Vooral intensivering op maat en vrijlating kan uitstroom naar werk (minimaal in deeltijd) vergroten. Voor wat betreft de effecten op baanzoekintensiteit, zelfredzaamheid, welbevinden en vertrouwen, is het beeld diffuus. We vinden kleine en soms ook positieve effecten, vooral voor zelfredzaamheid en vertrouwen, maar het beeld is niet eenduidig. De kleine aantallen deelnemers in de experimenten maken het lastig statistisch significante effecten te vinden., Which municipalities' action and intervention strategies contribute to job prospects and an improvement in people well-being and confidence in social assistance benefits? Six municipalities – Groningen, Utrecht, Tilburg, Wageningen, Deventer and Nijmegen – have conducted unique randomized controlled trials for social assistance benefits in recent years (October 1, 2017 - December 31, 2019). The following (combination of) interventions have been investigated: exemption from reintegration obligations, intensification of counselling and earnings release of extra earnings. The outflow to work as well as job search intensity, well-being, self-efficacy and trust were examined. The outflow to work for all interventions is not lower than in the current approach, while the outflow to part-time work is higher in some municipalities. In particular, tailor-made intensification and earnings release can increase outflow to (at least part-time) work. The picture is diffuse concerning the effects on job search intensity, well-being, self-efficacy and trust. We find small, and sometimes positive effects, especially for self-reliance and confidence, but the picture is not clear-cut. The small numbers of participants in the experiments make it difficult to find statistically significant effects.

Objectives Gain insight into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prevalence, incidence, and risk factors of mental health problems among the Dutch general population and different age groups in November-December 2020, compared with the prevalence, incidence, and risk factors in the same period in 2018 and 2019. More specifically, the prevalence, incidence, and risk factors of anxiety and depression symptoms, sleep problems, fatigue, impaired functioning due to health problems, and use of medicines for sleep problems, medicines for anxiety and depression, and mental health service. Methods We extracted data from the Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel that is based on a probability sample of the Dutch population of 16 years and older by Statistics Netherlands. We focused on three waves of the longitudinal Health module in November-December 2018 (T1), November-December 2019 (T2), and November-December 2020 (T3), and selected respondents who were 18 years and older at T1. In total, 4,064 respondents participated in all three surveys. Data were weighted using 16 demographics profiles of the Dutch adult population. The course of mental health problems was examined using generalized estimating equations (GEE) for longitudinal ordinal data and differences in incidence with logistic regression analyses. In both types of analyses, we controlled for sex, age, marital status, employment status, education level, and physical disease. Results Among the total study sample, no significant increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms, sleep problems, fatigue, impaired functioning due to health problems, use of medicines for sleep problems, of medicines for anxiety and depression, and of mental health service in November-December 2020 was observed, compared with the prevalence in November-December 2018 and 2019 (T3 did not differ from T1 and T2). Among the four different age categories (18–34, 35–49, 50–64, and 65 years old and older respondents), 50–64 years respondents had a significantly lower prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms at T3 than at T1 and T2, while the prevalence at T1 and T2 did not differ. A similar pattern among 65+ respondents was found for mental health service use. We found no indications that the incidence of examined health problems at T2 (no problems at T1, problems at T2) and T3 (no problems at T2, problems at T3) differed. Risk factors for mental health problems at T2 were mostly similar to risk factors at T3; sex and age were less/not a risk factor for sleep problems at T3 compared with at T2. Conclusions The prevalence, incidence, and risk factors of the examined mental health problems examined nine months after the COVID-19 outbreak appear to be very stable across the end of 2018, 2019, and 2020 among the Dutch adult population and different age categories, suggesting that the Dutch adult population in general is rather resilient given all disruptions due to this pandemic.

We assess the effects of differing welfare-capitalist ‘regimes’ on income inequality, economic (job)insecurity, gender inequality and life satisfaction. Thirty-one advanced industrial countries are classified as having a ‘regime’ that is predominantly social democratic, liberal, corporatist-conservative, Southern European ‘familial’, or East European post-communist (Esping-Andersen, The three worlds of welfare-capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, Social foundations of postindustrial economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; Arts and Gelissen, The Oxford handbook of the welfare state. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). We find that income inequality and economic insecurity (fear of job loss) are lower in the Scandinavian social democratic regimes than the other regimes. Life satisfaction is both higher and more equal. It is also found that differences in life satisfaction between people of higher and lower socio-economic status, and between those with higher and lower incomes, are comparatively small in social democratic regimes. The evidence on gender equality is mixed. Women are well represented in political office in Scandinavia, but the gender pay gap is not smaller than elsewhere. Nor are Scandinavian women more satisfied with life, relative to men, than in other regimes. Satisfaction with ‘work-life balance’ is highest in Scandinavia, but it is men not women who are most satisfied. Data are drawn from the European Social Survey (2002–), the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia Survey (2001–), the Japanese Household Panel Survey (2009–), and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (2009–).

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of potentially traumatic events (PTEs), posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), and coping self-efficacy (CSE) on post-event job satisfaction.Repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess differences in the course of job satisfaction during 1 year between population-based samples of affected and nonaffected workers. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted with pre-event health, job satisfaction and insecurity, and postevent PTSS and CSE as predictors.About 16% of the affected workers had probable PTSD. The course of job satisfaction between affected (n = 123) and nonaffected workers (n = 644) did not differ significantly. PTSS and CSE did not independently predict post-event satisfaction, in contrast to pre-event job satisfaction.Findings suggest that when needed social support is provided, concerns about the negative effects of potentially traumatic events on job satisfaction could be somewhat relaxed.

An adequate theory of life satisfaction (LS) needs to take account of both factors that tend to stabilise LS and those that change it. The most widely accepted theory in the recent past—set-point theory—focussed solely on stability (Brickman and Campbell, in:Appley (ed) Adaptation level theory, Academic Press, New York, pp 287–302, 1971; Lykken and Tellegen in Psychol Sci 7:186–189, 1996). That theory is now regarded as inadequate by most researchers, given that national panel surveys in several Western countries show that substantial minorities of respondents have recorded large, long term changes in LS (Sheldon and Lucas in The stability of happiness, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2014). In this paper we set out a preliminary revised theory, based mainly on analysis of the LS trajectories of the 2473 respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel who reported their LS for 25 consecutive years in 1990–2014. The theory entails three sets of propositions in which we attempt to account for stability, change and also volatility. First, it is proposed that stability is primarily due to stable personality traits, and also to parental influence on LS. The second set of propositions indicates that medium and long term changes are due to differences and changes in personal values/life priorities and behavioural choices. Differences in the priority given to pro-social values, family values and materialistic values affect LS, as do behavioural choices relating to one’s partner, physical exercise, social participation and networks, church attendance, and the balance between work and leisure. Medium term change is reinforced by two-way causation—positive feedback loops—between values, behavioural choices and LS. The third set of propositions breaks new ground in seeking to explain inter-individual differences in the volatility/variability of LS over time; why some individuals display high volatility and others low, even though their mean level of LS may change little over 25 years.Keywords: Medium and long term LS change, Trajectories of LS, Set-point theory, Volatility of LS, German Socio-Economic Panel

De bijstand heeft veel regels en verplichtingen. Maar wat gebeurt er als mensen zelf kunnen bepalen wat zij moeten doen om zo snel mogelijk werk te vinden? De gemeenten Oss, Apeldoorn, Epe en Geldrop-Mierlo hebben onder begeleiding van Tilburg University het experiment ‘Zelf aan het stuur en op maat’ uitgevoerd.

The aim of the study reported here was to assess whether the prevalence of mental health problems (MHP) among Dutch 19–24 year old adults increased in the past decade and/or whether the distribution of latent profiles of mental health problems changed over the years. For this purpose, data was extracted from the LISS panel, based on a representative national sample of the Dutch population. We focused on three exclusive groups who were 19–24 years old in 2007 (n = 383), 2012 (n = 351) or 2017 (n = 362). Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that the 2012 and 2017 group did not have more MHP according to seven mental health-related indicators including mental health services utilization. Latent profile analysis identified 4 classes of MHP profiles, labeled "healthy" (82.2%), "at risk" (9.6%), "clinical" (4.2%) and "treatment" (3.9%). The 2007, 2012 and 2017 cohorts were equally distributed across these four classes. However, females had systematically more health problems than males and more often belonged to the "at risk", "clinical" and "treatment" class. In sum, our findings do not support concerns about an increase in MHP or that problems have become more complex among Dutch young adults over the past decade.

In Nederland kennen we een activerend re-integratiebeleid dat gericht is op een zo snel mogelijke overgang naar betaald werk. Echter, in dit publiek arbeidsbemiddelingsbeleid wordt nagenoeg niet geinvesteerd in scholing om kwetsbare groepen meer perspectief te bieden op de arbeidsmarkt. In Nederland bestaat ook een langdurig en grootschalig privaat programma, waarin (om-/bij)scholing centraal staat. Het Philips Werkgelegenheidsplan (WGP) biedt werkervaringsplaatsen aan kwetsbare groepen op de arbeidsmarkt. In dit onderzoek kijken we naar het langetermijneffect van deelname aan dit programma, tot tien jaar na uitstroom, op het aantal weken per jaar in een baan. Tevens wordt onderzocht of deelname aan het programma invloed heeft op het aantal weken in banen die aansluiten bij de vaardigheden van werknemers. Verschil-in-verschil metingen (middels fixed-effects lineaire panelregressie) laten een positief langetermijneffect zien voor (oud-)deelnemers op de mate van werkzekerheid en ook op het verblijf in goede banen. Het grootste effect op zowel werkzekerheid als het verblijf in goede banen vinden we voor mensen met een arbeidsbeperking en voor mensen met een migratieachtergrond, twee van de doelgroepen van het programma.

We analyse the Life Satisfaction trajectories of respondents in three long-running, national panel surveys: the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia Survey (HILDA), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Previous research has shown that substantial minorities of respondents in all three countries recorded long term changes in LS (Fujita and Diener in J Personal Soc Psychol 88:158–64, 2005; Headey in Soc Indic Res 76:312–317, 2006; Headey et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107:17922–7926, 2010; Headey et al. Soc Indic Res 112:725–48, 2013). In a recent SIR paper based on the German data (Headey and Muffels in Soc Indic Res, 2015. doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1146-8 ), we showed graphs of LS trajectories which suggested—and subsequent statistical analysis confirmed—that respondents typically spend multiple consecutive years above and, in other periods, below their own long term mean level of LS. Here we extend the analysis to Australia and Britain, showing that results replicate in two more Western countries. It appears that most people go through relatively happy periods of life, and relatively unhappy periods. The evidence runs counter to set-point theory which views adult LS as stable, except for short term fluctuations due to life events. In the second half of the paper we try to contribute to a theory of medium term life satisfaction. We estimate structural equation models with two-way causation between LS and variables usually treated as causes of LS, including health, social support, frequency of social activities, and satisfaction with one’s work, partner and family life. In all three countries we find that there are positive feedback loops between these variables and LS, which partly account for extended periods of high or low LS. The two-way causation models are based on a modified concept of ‘Granger-causation’ (Granger in Econometrica 37(3):424–38, 1969). The main intuition behind Granger-causation is that if x can be shown to be statistically significantly related to y in a model which includes multiple lags of y, then it can be inferred that x is one cause of y.

The chapter discusses the history, design and first empirical findings of Dutch local RCT (Randomised Controlled Trial) experiments with participation income which are currently implemented in 11 cities. The emergence of these local experiments can be viewed as reflecting an ongoing shift in Dutch social policy from a classical ‘stick and carrot’ or workfare approach of social welfare, to a social investment and capacitating approach. The empirical analyses discuss the methodology and outcomes on job search, employment chances and work capabilities, and the health and well-being of some 1500 participants using survey and municipal administrative data. We perform LCA (Latent Class Analysis) to provide a profile of the participants of the experiments and estimate (binary logit regression) their exit probabilities into paid work. In the end we formulate some expectations and conclusions about the meaning and effects of these participation income experiments in the Netherlands for people’s employment, health and well-being situation, and their wider implications for social policy, notably with a view to a social investment and capacitating approach.

Item does not contain fulltext Homeownership, as a way to build up housing wealth, is believed to play an increasingly important role in terms of providing welfare to citizens. However, homeownership does not always act as a nest-egg; it can be a source of financial anxiety as well. In this paper we investigate how homeownership and housing wealth impact on the relationship between divorce and subjective wellbeing (life satisfaction, happiness, financial satisfaction). Using longitudinal data for Australia we find that homeowners are more negatively affected with respect to wellbeing by divorce than tenants, amongst others because the owned house becomes a financial burden. We further find that gender moderates the impact of homeownership and tenure change upon divorce on wellbeing. When women move from an owned to a rented house, divorce has a smaller negative effect on happiness and financial satisfaction than when women stay in the owned house. For men, staying in the owned house or moving within the owner-occupied sector increases happiness, but moving to the rental sector from the owned house increases financial satisfaction. Furthermore, for men, housing wealth mitigates financial stress when remaining in an owner-occupied house after divorce. We conclude that the potential role of homeownership as a welfare resource - in this case for subjective well-being - seems rather limited to those who already possess other resources (e.g. financial security) and therefore cannot be expected to substitute more traditional forms of welfare. 15 p.

Long term panel data enable researchers to construct trajectories of LS for individuals over time. Bar charts of trajectories, and subsequent statistical analysis, show that respondents typically spend multiple consecutive years above and below their own long-term mean level of LS. We attempt to explain these multi-year waves of change by estimating structural equation models with two-way causal links between LS and variables usually treated as causes of LS, including health, frequency of physical exercise and frequency of social activities. Results are interpreted as showing positive feedback loops between these variables and LS, such that gains and losses of LS tend to be reinforced over time.Read More: http://ejournals.duncker-humblot.de/doi/abs/10.3790/schm.135.1.97

Summary Flexicurity in times of crisis in the Netherlands and Europe: A comparative analysis of social modelsThe purpose of the article is to highlight the consequences of the recent economic crises for the way European welfare states and notably the Dutch one dealt with the challenge to maintain the balance between flexibility and security goals with regard to the labour market. This will be pursued against the background of the theory of social models in which social models are conceived as ideal-typical configurations of labour market and social security institutions which reflect different ideas about the functioning of the labour market. We distinguish three models among which the flexicurity model, that is assumed to bridge the two opposite poles of the broad spectrum of social models, i.e. the liberal Anglophone variant and the Classical welfare state variant. The European Labour Force Survey of 2008 is used to analyse the effects of various labour market institutions on the employment performance of countries and regions before the crisis whereas the European Social Survey is used to research the differential impact of the crisis along the broad spectrum of European welfare states on the employment insecurity of various groups such as the youngsters, elderly and the low-skilled.

ObjectivesThe effects of disasters on mental health are well documented, but very little is known about the short to long-term effects of human-made disasters on wage and employment security careers of the affected residents.MethodsResidents affected by a major fireworks disaster (May 13, 2000) in a Dutch residential area were all anonymously identified, based on postal codes of the affected area. To gain insight in these effects, data were derived from Statistics Netherlands that records all individual demographic, gross annual wages and employment security data of the entire Dutch population since 1999. A quasi-experimental matched control group design was used by constructing two pair-wise matched groups of non-affected residents of the city of Tilburg andthe general Dutch population. Matching was based on nine demographic variables such as gender, age, education level and gross annual wage in 1999 (Ntotal = 12,648). The effects of the disaster on wage and employment security from 1999 to 2016 among the total group and among those with low wages in 1999, were assessed using fixed-effects panel regression analyses.ResultsAffected residents had significant lower gross annual wages in the medium and long term than the non-affected groups from the Netherlands, but differences were (very) small. Compared to the Tilburg group the significant differences were trivial in the medium term. Among the low-wage groups, no relevant differences were found between affected and nonaffected residents. With respect to employment security, no or trivial differences were found between the total group of affected and matched comparison groups. Among those with low wages in 1999, in 2001 and especially 2002 affected residents worked fewer weeks per year than non-affected from Tilburg. In 2002 the difference with the Tilburg group was above moderate.ConclusionsThese results speak to the resilience of affected residents, given the mental health problems and PTSD-symptomatology they suffered from, as shown in previous research.

Aggregate and individual data are used to test the association between employment performance and different ways of reconciling flexibility and security in European labour markets. Particular use is made of statistics on individuals’ labour market transitions as revealed by national labour force surveys. The article compares the performance of three basic forms of labour market institutions: the uncoordinated liberal, or neoliberal one; flexisecurity; and the traditional welfare state model of labour security. The findings confirm the importance of coordinated collective bargaining and of values and trust. Des données agrégées et individuelles sont utilisées pour tester l'association entre les performances en matière d'emploi et les différentes manières de concilier flexibilité et sécurité sur les marchés européens du travail. Un usage particulier est fait des statistiques sur les transitions des individus sur le marché du travail, telles que les révèlent les études nationales sur la main-d'œuvre. L'article compare les performances des trois formes fondamentales d'institutions du marché du travail: l'approche non coordonnée, libérale ou néolibérale; la flexicurité; le modèle traditionnel de sécurité du travail de l'État-providence. Les résultats confirment l'importance de la négociation collective coordonnée et celle des valeurs et de la confiance. Anhand von aggregierten und individuellen Daten wird der Zusammenhang zwischen der Leistungsfähigkeit europäischer Arbeitsmärkte im Beschäftigungsbereich und verschiedenen Ansätzen zur Vereinbarung von Flexibilität und Sicherheit untersucht. Dabei werden insbesondere statistische Angaben aus nationalen Arbeitskräfteerhebungen zu individuellen Arbeitsmarktübergängen verwendet. In diesem Beitrag werden die Leistungen von drei grundlegenden Formen von Arbeitsmärkten verglichen: das unkoordinierte liberale oder neoliberale Modell, das Flexi-Security-Modell und das traditionelle Modell der Arbeitsplatzsicherheit des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass koordinierte Tarifverhandlungen sowie Werte und Vertrauen von großer Bedeutung sind.

The aim of the article is to discuss the concept of flexicurity presented as a new paradigm for analyzing modern labor markets (analytical perspective) and as a metaphor for policies striving for a better balance between flexibility and security (normative perspective). The purpose is to clarify these analytical and normative meanings of the flexicurity concept from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Flexicurity has been a policy strategy since 2005/2006 endorsed by the European Commission and put on top of the political agenda for the European Employment Strategy and EU 2020, the 10-year strategy of the EU. We briefly sketch the tenets of the flexicurity approach by discussing the main issues in the European academic and policy debate. We subsequently present empirical evidence based on the definition of dynamic outcome indicators for assessing the performance of 26 countries in the EU in balancing flexibility and security. The findings challenge the conventionally presumed trade-off between flexibility and security.

German reunification provides a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of migration on subjective well-being (SWB) on the basis of longitudinal pre- and post-migration data. Our main goal is to assess the effects of adaptation, social comparison and economic integration on the change in SWB associated with migration from eastern to western Germany after the German reunification of 1990. We expect that gains or losses in SWB after migration are influenced by how migrants adapt to their new economic conditions, with whom they compare themselves and how well they integrate economically (as indicated by their relative income position) into the new society. We estimate fixed-effects generalized least squares regressions using Socio-Economic Panel data for the period 1990–2014. The results indicate a positive and strong effect of migration on SWB, both for men and women, that results in part from the higher incomes migrants earn in the new society. In line with the Easterlin paradox, our results show that general income increases do not generate equivalent gains in SWB because of processes of adaptation and social comparison. For migrating men the increase in SWB is diminished significantly by a dissatisfaction resulting from comparing their income with that of their new peers in western Germany and that of their former peers in eastern Germany. The change in SWB of migrating women and men is much more dependent on social comparison than on economic integration.

In Sen’s Capability Approach (CA) well-being can be defined as the freedom of choice to achieve the things in life which one has reason to value most for his or her personal life. Capabilities are in Sen’s vocabulary therefore the real freedoms people have or the opportunities available to them. In this paper we examine the impact of capabilities alongside choices on well-being. There is a lot of theoretical work on Sen’s capability framework but still a lack of empirical research in measuring and testing his capability model especially in a dynamic perspective. The contribution of the paper is first to test Sen’s theoretical CA approach empirically using 25 years of German and 18 years of British data. Second, to examine to what extent the capability approach can explain long-term changes in well-being and third to view the impact on subjective as well as objective well-being in two clearly distinct welfare states. Three measures of well-being are constructed: life satisfaction for subjective well-being and relative income and employment security for objective well-being. We ran random and fixed effects GLS models. The findings strongly support Sen’s capabilities framework and provide evidence on the way capabilities, choices and constraints matter for objective and subjective well-being. Capabilities pertaining to human capital, trust, altruism and risk taking, and choices to family, work-leisure, lifestyle and social behaviour show to strongly affect long-term changes in subjective and objective well-being though in a different way largely depending on the type of well-being measure used.

Using data from national socio-economic panel surveys in Australia, Britain and Germany, this paper analyzes the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that, in all three countries, preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner’s personality, hours of work, social participation and healthy lifestyle have substantial and similar effects on life satisfaction. The results have negative implications for a widely accepted theory of SWB, set-point theory. This theory holds that adult SWB is stable in the medium and long term, although temporary fluctuations occur due to life events. Set-point theory has come under increasing criticism in recent years, primarily due to unmistakable evidence in the German Socio-Economic Panel that, during the last 25 years, over a third of the population has recorded substantial and apparently permanent changes in life satisfaction (Fujita and Diener in J Pers Soc Psychol 88:158–64, 2005; Headey in Soc Indic Res 85:389–403, 2008a; Headey et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107(42):17922–17926, 2010). It is becoming clear that the main challenge now for SWB researchers is to develop new explanations which can account for medium and long term change, and not merely stability in SWB. Set-point theory is limited precisely because it is purely a theory of stability. The paper is based on specially constructed panel survey files in which data are divided into multi-year periods in order to facilitate analysis of medium and long term change.

The negative effect of childbirth on mothers’ labour supply is well documented, though most studies examine only the short-term effects. This study uses retrospective life history data for Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain to investigate the long-term effects of childbirth on mothers’ labour supply for successive birth cohorts. Probit estimates with correction for selection into motherhood and the number of births show strong drops in participation before first childbirths and strong recovery after the birth of the last child, especially in Great Britain. Younger cohorts display a less sharp decline in participation around childbirth and a faster increase in participation in the 20 years after childbirth, especially in the Netherlands. However, mothers’ participation rates do not return to pre-birth levels in any of the countries studied here. Labour market conditions and institutional public support seem to contribute to explaining the cross-country variation in participation after childbirth.

Event history data constitute a valuable source to analyze life courses, although the reliance of such data on autobiographical memory raises many concerns over their reliability. In this paper, we use Swedish survey data to investigate bias in retrospective reports of employment biographies, applying a novel model-based latent Markov method. A descriptive comparison of the biographies as reconstructed by the same respondents at two interviews carried out about 10 years apart reveals that careers appear simpler and less heterogeneous and have fewer elements and episodes when reported at a point long after their occurrence, with a particularly high underreport of unemployment. Using matching techniques, the dissimilarity between the two reconstructions turns out to be unaffected by respondents' sociodemographic characteristics but particularly affected by the occurrence of unemployment spells and career complexity. Using latent Markov models, we assume correlated errors across occasions to determine the measurement error and to obtain a more reliable estimate of the (true) latent state occupied at a particular time point. The results confirm that (correlated) measurement errors lead to simplification and conventionalism. Career complexity makes recall particularly problematic at longer recall distances, whereas unemployment underreporting also happens very close to the interview. However, only a small fraction of respondents make consistent errors over time, while the great majority makes no errors at all.

Panel and life-course data are ideally suited to unravelling labour market dynamics, but their designs differ, with potential consequences for the estimated relationships. To gauge the extent to which these two data designs produce dissimilar transition rates and the causation thereof, we use the German Life History Study and the German Socio-Economic Panel. Life-course data in particular suffer from recall effects due to memory bias causing understated transition probabilities. Panel data suffer from seam effects due to spurious transitions between statuses recalled in activity calendars that generate heaps at particular time points and cause overstated transition probabilities. We combine the two datasets and estimate multilevel (multistate) discrete-time models for event history data to model transitions between labour market states taking these factors into account. Though we find much lower transition rates in the life-course study, confirming the results of Solga (Qual Quant 35:291–309, 2001) in this Journal for East-Germany, part of the difference can be explained by short spells recall bias. The estimated models on exit, re-entry and job mobility on the combined datasets show indeed a negative retrospective design effect. Another specification that includes the length of the recall period shows no significant decrease in the transition probabilities with increasing length, suggesting that the negative design effect is due to other design differences.

The paper investigates cross-country differences in wage mobility in\nEurope using the European Community Household Panel. We examine the\nimpact of specific wage-setting institutions, such as the collective\nbargaining and the trade union density, the employment protection\nregulation and the welfare state regime on wage mobility. We apply a\nlog-linear approach that is very much similar to a restricted\nmultinomial logit model and much more flexible than the standard probit\napproach that is typically applied in the research on wage mobility. It\nis shown that the macro-economic context and the aforementioned specific\ninstitutions explain a substantial part of the cross-country variation\nthat is larger than the part that regime type explains. The findings\nalso confirm the existence of an inverse U-shape pattern of wage\nmobility, showing a great deal of low-wage and high-wage persistence in\nall countries.

The dominant view in economics is that increasing demands for flexibility on the labour market jeopardizes employment security. However, against the prediction of a negative relationship or a`trade-off' between flexibility and security, there is evidence for a positive, mutually reinforcing relationship known as the `flexicurity' thesis. Using comparative panel data for 14 European countries, we elaborate dynamic outcome indicators for flexibility and employment security to assess the differences across countries and welfare regimes in balancing the two.We estimate transition models to explain the observed mobility patterns.The outcomes confirm the impact of the institutional set-up indicated by regime type on these transitions supporting the `variety of capitalism' approach.The regulated Southern and Continental regimes perform worst and the unregulated Anglo-Saxon and Nordic regimes best in attaining high levels of flexibility and employment security simultaneously, though for both regimes with a small loss either in flexibility or in security.

An adequate theory of Life Satisfaction (LS) needs to take account of both factors that tend to stabilise LS and those that change it. The most widely accepted theory in the recent past – set-point theory – focussed solely on stability (Brickman and Campbell, 1971; Lykken and Tellegen, 1996). That theory is now regarded as inadequate by most researchers, given that national panel surveys in several Western countries show that substantial minorities of respondents have recorded large, long term changes in LS (Sheldon and Lucas, 2014). In this paper we set out a preliminary revised theory, based mainly on analysis of the LS trajectories of the 2473 respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel who reported their LS for 25 consecutive years in 1990-2014. The theory entails three sets of propositions in which we attempt to account for stability, change and also volatility. First, it is proposed that stability is primarily due to stable personality traits, and also to parental influence on LS. The second set of propositions indicates that medium and long term changes are due to differences and changes in personal values/life priorities and behavioural choices. Differences in the priority given to pro-social values, family values and materialistic values affect LS, as do behavioural choices relating to one’s partner, physical exercise, social participation and networks, church attendance, and the balance between work and leisure. Changes in health and domain satisfactions can also substantially change LS. Medium term change is reinforced by two-way causation – positive feedback loops – between behavioural choices, domain satisfactions and LS. The third set of propositions breaks new ground in seeking to explain inter-individual differences in the volatility/variability of LS over time; why some individuals display high volatility and others low, even though their mean level of LS may change little over 25 years.

The paper uses household economic panel data from five countries—Australia, Britain, Germany, Hungary and The Netherlands—to provide a reassessment of the impact of economic well-being on happiness. The main conclusion is that happiness is considerably more affected by economic circumstances than previously believed. In all five countries wealth affects life satisfaction more than income. In the countries for which consumption data are available (Britain and Hungary), non-durable consumption expenditures also prove at least as important to happiness as income.

Studies have shown that voluntary job-to-job changes have a positive effect on wage growth. This paper argues that the impact of a job change on wage mobility depends on the position in the wage distribution. Using panel data from the UK and Germany, we show that a change of employer results into a wage increase only for the low paid workers. Within-firm job changes produce, on the average, moderate wage gains for the low-paid workers in Britain, but have no effect in Germany.

The proportion of women who withdraw from paid employment when they have children differs considerably among the countries of the European Union (EU), and the variation has mostly been attributed to institutional factors. In this study, we reassess the institutional explanation, because earlier supportive evidence is threatened by two alternative macro-level explanations: the influence of the economic necessity to work and the influence of gender role values in society. Our main research question is whether and to what extent these alternative explanations alter the effect of public childcare arrangements on mothers’ labour supply. Using panel data from 13 countries of the EU, we find evidence in favour of the institutional and economic explanations. In countries with more generous provision of public childcare and in countries with a lower level of economic welfare, the impact of childbirth on female labour supply is less negative than in other countries. Economic welfare appears to suppress rather than rival the institutional effect. More egalitarian gender role values in a country increase mothers’ labour supply, yet these values do not alter the institutional effect. Our results underpin the importance of publicly supported arrangements for enhancing female labour supply.

In a previous paper in this journal (Headey et al., 2000) a comparison was made between three so-called ‘best cases’ of welfare regime types, the ‘Liberal’ US, ‘the ‘Corporatist’ Germany and the ‘Social-Democratic’ Netherlands. That paper was based on the ten-year datasets drawn from the national socio-economic panel studies. For this paper we use the unique comparative panel dataset of the European Community Household Panel. At the time of research, only three waves of data covering the 1994–1996 period were available. Instead of three countries representing three different welfare state types as in the earlier paper we cover twelve countries allowing us to distinguish a fourth Southern or Mediterranean welfare regime type and to compare the performance of the four regimes. Compared to the Headey’s et al. paper we focus on the comparative analysis of the level of deprivation and pay less attention to income poverty and inequality. Because we consider deprivation to be part of the concept of social exclusion (see also Atkinson et al., 2002) our results also provide evidence on how welfare regimes across the EU cope with social exclusion. The result of the three ‘bestcases’ study were that the Social-Democratic welfare state performed best on nearly all social and economic indicators that were applied. Looking in this paper on deprivation levels the results are different and it appears that the Social-Democratic welfare state is good in preventing income poverty but performs less well in equalising levels of deprivation. The results also show that the immature Southern welfare states perform worse with respect to preventing deprivation. Trying to explain levels of deprivation by estimating Tobit panel regressions it turned out that the impact of regime type remains significant though limited. Structural disparities between the countries and regimes in terms of economic welfare, the demographic structure, and the employment situation explain most of the variance across countries.

The 1980s and 1990s have been decades of quitegood economic growth in North America and muchof Western Europe. But how have the fruits ofgrowth been shared? This paper reviews changingincome distributions in the U.S., Germany and theNetherlands. These three countries may be takenas exemplars and leading economic performers in``the three worlds of welfare capitalism''(Esping-Andersen, 1990). The U.S. is a liberalwelfare-capitalist state, Germany a corporatiststate, and the Netherlands (less clearly) asocial democratic welfare-capitalist state. Thepaper focuses particularly on income changes inthe bottom, middle and top quintiles and takesa ten year period into account.Previous analyses have shown that labor andmarket income dispersion are increasing, withincreased returns to human capital. Thepotential impact of government through thetax-transfer system has been largely ignored.All three governments redistribute income fromthe rich to the poor. However, the paper showsthat only the Dutch government hasredistributed sufficiently to ensure that thebottom quintile has gained along with others.In Germany and the U.S. the poorest quintile wasconsiderably worse off in absolute terms at theend of the decade.than the beginning. TheGerman government somewhat counteracted thetrend towards greater income dispersion byredistributing to the poorest quintile, so theloss of market income was partly compensated. In the U.S. the impact of government on thepoorest quintile stayed about the same, so thisgroup ended up with about the same decrease indisposable income as market income.The U.S., Germany and the Netherlands are theonly three countries for which ten or moreconsecutive years of panel data are available.The data come from the PSID-GSOEP EquivalentFile 1980-97 and from a comparable fileconstructed from the Dutch SEP data.

Two-way causation issues are the bete noire of life satisfaction research. As acknowledged in several landmark reviews, many variables routinely reported as causes or determinants of life satisfaction could equally well be consequences, or perhaps both causes and consequences (Diener, 1984; Diener, Suh, Lucas and Smith, 1999; Argyle, 2001; Frey and Stutzer, 2002). These variables include one's state of health, social support and participation, exercise, job satisfaction and satisfaction with one's partner and family life. In previous attempts to disentangle two-way causation issues, a wide variety of statistical models have been deployed. Conflicting empirical results have been reported, together with concerns about model 'goodness of fit' and model stability. In this paper we estimate five-wave structural equation models using data from large, nationally representative panel surveys in Australia, Britain and Germany. The models are based on a modified concept of Granger-causation (Granger, 1969). The main intuition behind Granger-causation is that if lagged versions of time-series variable x have statistically significant effects on time-series variable y in equations in which multiple lagged versions of y are also included, then it can be inferred that x is one cause (or 'Granger-cause') of y. We adapt Granger's approach, extending it to encompass two-way causation and panel survey data. It transpires that our Granger-style models have satisfactory fits to the panel data and are stable. Alternative models fit the data much less well. Substantively, we find that two-way causation is pervasive: all of the x variables mentioned above appear to be both causes and consequences of life satisfaction. With minor exceptions, results replicate across all three datasets, despite non-trivial differences between the measures used in the three countries. One implication is that researchers who have assumed one-way causation have seriously over-estimated the effects of x variables on LS. A second implication is that many people apparently experience multi-year gains or losses of life satisfaction rather than just recording short term fluctuations around their own normal level or 'set-point'.

In this paper, we use panel data from the UK and Germany to investigate the effect of employer changes and in-firm job changes on year-to-year wage mobility of male full-time workers. Following segmentation theories and the job search theory, we study whether this effect differs for the low- and high-wage workers. As wage growth is endogenous to the decision of changing jobs, a two-stage Heckman selection approach is used. Specifically, we first estimate a random-effects multinomial logit model for the selection into a job transition and then a fixed-effects panel regression model for the wage growth. The findings suggest that both external and in-firm job changes result into substantial wage gains for the low-paid workers but not for the medium- or high-paid workers. However, the wage gain of low-paid workers due to an in-firm job change is only observed in the UK and is less pronounced than their gain by an external job change. In the German labour market, the later effect is insignificant. The results indicate that low-paid workers profit more from a voluntary change of employer in the coordinated German labour market and from a voluntary in-firm change in the liberal British labour market. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

This paper reviews changing income distributions in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, treating the three countries as leading economic performers in ' the three worlds of welfare capitalism.' Previous analyses have shown that earnings dispersion is increasing. The potential impact of government through the tax and transfer system has been largely ignored. It is shown that in the United States and Germany changes in market incomes favored the upper quintiles and that the bottom quintile became worse off. Government did nothing to reverse these trends. In the Netherlands the trend in market incomes was similar but the government redistributed, so that the bottom quintile' s post-government income increased along with the other quintiles. Data come from the PSID-GSOEP Equivalent File and the Dutch Socio-Economic Panel.

This paper reviews changing income distributions in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, treating the three countries as leading economic performers in ‘the three worlds of welfare capitalism.’ Previous analyses have shown that earnings dispersion is increasing. The potential impact of government through the tax and transfer system has been largely ignored. It is shown that in the United States and Germany changes in market incomes favored the upper quintiles and that the bottom quintile became worse off. Government did nothing to reverse these trends. In the Netherlands the trend in market incomes was similar but the government redistributed, so that the bottom quintile's post-government income increased along with the other quintiles. Data come from the PSID-GSOEP Equivalent File and the Dutch Socio-Economic Panel.

A crucial debate in policy-making as well as academiccircles is whether there is a trade-off betweeneconomic efficiency and the size/generosity of thewelfare state. One way to contribute to this debate isto compare the performance of ‘best cases’ ofdifferent types of state. Arguably, in the decade1985’94, the US, West Germany and the Netherlands were ‘best cases best economic performers’ in whatEsping-Andersen (1990) calls “the three worlds ofwelfare capitalism”. The US is a liberalwelfare-capitalist state, West Germany a corporatiststate, and the Netherlands is social democratic in itstax-transfer system, although not its labor marketpolicies. These three countries had rates of economicgrowth per capita as high or higher than other richcountries of their `type’, and the lowest rates ofunemployment.

Which factors explain intra- and inter-country variations in levels of public support for national health care systems within the European Union, and why? We propose that public opinion towards public health care is dependent on (1) the type of welfare state regime to which the various European welfare states belong, (2) typical features of the national care system and (3) individual social and demographic characteristics, which are related to self-interest or morality oriented motives. To assess the explanatory power of these factors, data from the Eurobarometer survey series are analysed. Support for public health care appears to be particularly positively related to social-democratic attributes of welfare states, whereas support drops with increasing degrees of liberalism and conservatism. Further, support for public health care proves to be associated with wider coverage and public funding of national care services. We also find higher levels of support in countries with scarce social services for children and the elderly, and larger proportions of female (part-time) employment. Lastly, with respect to individual characteristics, we find remarkably little evidence for self-interest oriented motives affecting the preference for solidary health care arrangements.

Long term panel data enable researchers to construct Life Satisfaction (LS) trajectories for individuals over time. In this paper we analyse the trajectories of respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel who recorded their LS for 20 consecutive years in 1991-2010. Previous research has shown that at least a quarter of these respondents recorded substantial long term changes in LS (Headey, Muffels and Wagner, 2010, 2012). In this paper, bar charts of LS trajectories, and subsequent statistical analysis, show that respondents tend to spend multiple consecutive years either above and/or below their own 20-year mean level of LS. These results are contrary to set-point theory which views LS as stable, except for short term fluctuations due to major life events. In the later part of the paper we attempt to explain multi-year/medium term changes in LS. We estimate structural equation models with two-way causation between LS and variables usually treated as causes of LS, including health, frequency of physical exercise, frequency of social activities/social participation, and satisfaction with work and leisure. The results are interpreted as showing positive feedback loops between these variables and LS, such that gains and losses of LS tend to be reinforced over time. The models are based on a modified concept of ‘Granger-causation’ (Granger, 1969). The main intuition behind Granger-causation is that if x can be shown to be statistically significantly related to y in a model which includes multiple lags of y, then it can be inferred that x is one cause of y.

From the rich literature on happiness and subjective well-being that money does not buy happiness. This is known as Easterlin's paradox, which posits that beyond a certain level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita wealthier nations are not better off in terms of subjective well-being than less wealthy nations, whereas within countries absolute income pays off in terms of happiness though at a diminishing rate. The paradox is challenged in a seminal paper by Stevenson and Wolfers, who used the World Values Survey, the Eurobarometer, the General Social Survey and Gallup's World Poll Data for various years to examine the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and absolute income. The Easterlin paradox constitutes the analysis, supplemented with sociological notions about the possible impact of social and modernization values on happiness. Research on SWB from a modernization perspective is rather scarce in the social sciences. Keywords: Easterlin's paradox; Eurobarometer; gross domestic product (GDP); relative income; social values; subjective well-being (SWB); Wolfers; World Values Survey