Why does unemployment make people want to die?

This is an article about suicide.  If you're experiencing suicidal thoughts there are places you can go for support. Find out more on the Mind website or call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90.

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Today saw the release of a new study in the British Medical Journal that shows how the rate of suicide has increased during the recession in the UK (link to paper here).  Importantly, a key finding in the study is that for every 10 per cent rise in unemployment, there is an associated 1.4 per cent increase in suicide.

This finding confirms the results of many previous studies: that unemployment is psychologically damaging and tends to increase the risk of suicide.  Indeed, it has been nothing but bad news for the unemployed during the past few weeks.  In July, the ONS released their major findings on subjective well-being; showing that the unemployed are one of the most unhappiest groups of all.

Why is unemployment such a miserable experience?

The question of why unemployment increases risk of suicide (and other harmful health behaviours) has been a key question in the social sciences for some time.  This is not necessarily an obvious question to ask.  Economists have tended to assume that leisure is good and work is a burden.  Since the unemployed have copious amounts of leisure, shouldn't they have decent levels of happiness?

The answer shown in studies like the BMJ one is definitely not.  And so explanations and theories have been proposed.  The most obvious explanation is income: i.e.: unemployment has a tendency to intensify experiences of low income and poverty.  This is especially true of the UK, which has a social security system with very low income replacement rates.

The second most obvious explanation is that it has nothing to do with unemployment at all.  This is the idea that people with physical and mental health problems are more likely to end up unemployed anyway.  Unemployment just happens to be a common experience and has nothing to do with the problems it's strongly correlated with.

The psychosocial environment of unemployment

While these two explanations are important, many studies have found that unemployment does have a causal relationship with the psychological problems associated with it.  Further, this important study by Winkelmann and Winkelmann found that unemployment had a harmful effect irrespective of income and that its psychosocial effects - rather than its economic ones - were of prime importance.

So what is so psychologically damaging about unemployment, for most people who experience it?  Marie Jahoda's theory of latent deprivation, developed in the 1980s, is still probably the most well-known psychological explanation.  Jahoda argued that employment fulfilled a range of psychological requirements she called 'latent functions': time structure, social activity, collective endeavour, regular activity, status and identity.

The problem with unemployment then is that it deprives people of 'latent functions' that are so valuable for mental well-being.  Jahoda's theory has come under some criticism since.  Most notably from David Fryer, who argued that unemployment is damaging because it restricts a person's sense of agency and autonomy.  And, to my mind, there is certainly something to be said about the way in which unemployment is socially constructed and, consequently, stigmatized.  Yet Jahoda's theory remains a good example of the kind of non-pecuniary benefits people acquire from work.  And the potential dangers of losing these benefits through a spell of unemployment.

What can we do about it?

If unemployment does have these effects, what can we do about it?  All in all, I would suggest three policy responses:

• Increase the value of unemployment benefits.  We still know that low income is a major problem for unemployed people, especially in the UK with the very low rate of JSA.
• Do much more to keep people in work. We also know that for many people, work is psychologically beneficial.  Doing more to keep people in jobs should similarly be a policy objective.
• Invest more in better active labour market policies.  The potential of active labour market policies (or welfare-to-work ) to improve the experience of unemployment is still relatively unknown.  There is some evidence to suggest these policies do have beneficial social outcomes - and this is something my own PhD research is focusing on.  This would involve providing more services to unemployment people, such as work experience schemes, training and education.

Finally though, beneath the public policy and statistics these are ultimately tragic human stories.  What they remind us of - and what governments seem to have ignored - is that unemployment is never a price worth paying.

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Young researchers beware: potential scams, paying for articles and David Publishing

Soon after the recent Social Policy Association (SPA) conference at York, I received an e-mail from an American publishing company called David Publishing.  The e-mail said that one of David Publishing's journals - the Journal of US-China Public Administration - was interested in potentially publishing my SPA conference paper (link here).

My initial reaction was to be quite excited by the letter.  This was a paper I worked on for my MSc last year, had put lots of work in to and had since been rejected by a couple of social science journals.  After the SPA conference I was convinced about finally putting the paper to bed, which - after a lot of hard work - was a tough decision to make.

So the e-mail from David Publishing looked (initially at least) very promising.  However, when I actually read through the e-mail for a second time, the alarm bells began to ring.  The letter seemed to be worded rather strangely.  For example, as you can see from below, the letter stated that the Journal 'hoped to become friends' with me.  This certainly wasn't what I've been used to with previous journal experience.

So (like all good academics would) I did a bit more research: on the journal and the publishing company.  The website for David Publishing seemed a bit odd with, again, lots of poor English.  Another blog I found by a researcher who had been contacted by the same publishing house said that they were actually based in China and could potentially be a front for Chinese researchers to get published in 'American' journals.

I also read rumours of David Publishing charging authors to publish their paper - and this is what really riled me.  Young researchers - most on low bursaries - are often desperate to get those first couple of journal articles under their belt to establish their careers.  Deliberately approaching young researchers and offering to publish their work - and then subsequently charging them for it - seemed to be deeply cynical and exploitative.

So I contacted David and asked them do they charge.  Their e-mail response is posted below.  David Publishing charge $50 per page for a journal article.  If you consider most journal articles are between 10 to 20 pages long, this means that a researcher could end up paying between $500 to $1000 dollars to publish their paper.

Although some reputable publishing houses do charge for publication, deliberately targeting PhD students with the objective of taking up to $1000 from them for an article seems wrong to me.  By approaching young researchers, David Publishing are engaging in an exploitative practice, purposefully targeting eager, ambitious yet in all likelihood naive researchers; most of whom are not yet versed in how some quarters of the publishing world are happy to take advantage of them.

'Test, Learn, Adapt' - thoughts on the use of RCTs in social policy

Today, the Cabinet Office's 'nudge unit' has produced a new document advocating the greater use of randomised control trials (RCTs) in the policy-making process.  With 'Bad Science' writer Ben Goldacre on the team, it's received a fair bit of press, so I thought I'd review it and offer my own opinion on their key argument.

The argument
The thesis behind the paper is simple.  RCTs have been used in a range of other fields for some time - medicine, international development and business for example.  However, they have not been adapted to the policy-making process so enthusiastically.  Despite the early New Labour focus on 'what counts is what works', governments maintain the habit of ignoring scientific evidence on policy interventions.  The authors argue that this should change: if it does, we might get better policies and at a significantly cheaper cost.

Sounds too good to be true?
That's because it is.  In my view, the report rehashes old arguments about the use of 'scientific' evidence  in social policy.  The authors appear to come from a very one-sided scientific perspective: unaware of the long-established difficulties - particularly in social policy - of the interaction between science and society, politics and morality.  In fact, in their discussion of the 'myths' about RCTs, the authors focus exclusively on practical or economic objections, rather than any philosophical doubt about using scientific evidence to decide on policies.

The authors offer a deeply tempting and seductive view: that we can determine what policies we choose by scientific methods, removing age-old ideological debates about the Good Society once and for all.  Not only is it wrong to equate the objectives of social policy to other institutions, like medicine, but to my mind it seems quite undesirable.  Sure, we can use scientific methods like RCTs to choose between different policy interventions.  But first we have to decide what type of interventions we want in the first place.  And that requires debates and deliberations that science simply cannot answer.

Is the UK alone in turning against the welfare state?

In a paper I recently had published in the journal Social Policy and Society,  I looked at longitudinal data from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) to explore how attitudes to the welfare state - and in particular the unemployed - had changed over the past few decades.  The data show a strong and profound shift in attitudes against welfare.  Whilst once a majority of us tended to support more spending on benefits, there is now a solid consensus against extra spending on social security (especially for 'undeserving' groups like the unemployed).

In my paper, I try to offer an explanation for why this happened.  In short, I argue that the growth in anti-welfare attitudes has followed the deep and significant reforms to the welfare system that have taken place since the mid-1990s: stronger conditionality, sanctioning and the growing emphasis on personal responsibility.

However, this is not a particularly easy argument to prove one way or another.  I argue that the main basis supporting this theory is the timing of the attitudinal shift: around 1997/8 (or when New Labour came to power with a promise to change the welfare state).

Is this the only explanation?

An alternative hypothesis is that the UK has not been alone in its changing attitudes to welfare.  For example, it could be argued that anti-welfarism here is part of a broader, global trend in attitudes that come as a function of the shift to post-industrial (and largely neo-liberal) societies in the rich world.

One way to test this argument is to look at comparable, cross-national data on attitudes towards the welfare state.  This is not particularly easy: it's difficult to find attitudinal data that has been collected consistently over time and for a decent sample of countries.  There is one dataset though - the International Social Survey Programe - that might be able to give us some clues.

One question the ISSP asks concerns attitudes towards state generosity for the unemployed.  The question is:

"The Government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed" Do you strongly agree/agree/neither/disagree/strongly disagree?


This question was asked to respondents in five countries in both 1987 and 2010: Austria, Australia, Germany, the UK and the US.  This is a small sample but an interesting one: it contains three countries from 'liberal' welfare regime types (Australia, the UK and the US) and two from 'conservative' ones (Austria and Germany).  Comparing these five countries for the two time-points should allow us to see if there are any similarities (or differences) between the regime types in terms of changing attitudes towards supporting the unemployed.  It should also suggest whether shifting attitudes are universal, rather than a sole feature of British society.

A universal shift?


The results are quite surprising.  Here is a table that shows the proportion of respondents stating that they either 'strongly agree' or 'agree' that the Government should provide a 'decent standard of living for the unemployed':

A quick glance should tell you that only the UK and Germany have seen a drop in support for supporting the unemployed.  Indeed, even the US has seen a (slight) increase in agreement with decent public support the unemployed.  Here's a graph showing the percentage change between 1987 and 2010:

This kind of data is by no means conclusive: it's based on just one question for a sample of five countries.  But it does suggest two things.  First, that the shift against welfare in the UK - evidenced in domestic surveys like the BSA - is also evident in global, comparative surveys.  Second - and perhaps most importantly - other countries have seemingly had completely different experiences.

This is important.  In Britain, it's often implied by politicians and reformists that welfare retrenchment is inevitable: that it comes part and parcel of a new kind of economy and a changing society.  According to this theory however, other countries should also be undergoing the same kinds of cultural shifts.  The data shown above suggest the picture is more complex.  And that the future of the welfare state is much more uncertain than many of us think.

Welfare: it's not just how much you spend, it's what you spend it on

In an earlier post, I argued that in a time of high unemployment, governments have attached higher levels of importance to so-called 'activation' policies (ALMPS or welfare-to-work measures) that aim to boost and speed up people's return to work.  The data I showed demonstrated how, in comparative terms, the UK spends a small proportion of its national wealth on such policies.  In 2009 for example, we spent just 0.4 per cent of GDP on ALMPs.  The comparable figure for Denmark is nearly 1.2 per cent.

However, this paper by Giuliano Bonoli makes a crucial point: it's not just how much you spend, it's what you spend it on.  In short, Bonoli argues that there are four different 'policies within policies' when it comes to welfare-to-work:

• Occupation: or 'keeping people busy' (e.g. job creation schemes, community programmes)
• Incentive reinforcenment: or 'carrots and sticks' (e.g. sanctions, conditionality, tax credits)
• Employment assistance: or 'jobseeking help' (e.g. placement advice, counselling, personalisation)
• Upskilling: or 'training' (e.g. vocational courses)

Using data from the OECD, Bonoli compares how the structure of spending varies between countries on three of these policies: employment assistance, occupation ('direct job creation') and upskilling ('training'). Differentiating between such policies is important; most of us would agree, I think, that a more effective and fairer approach would be one that combined different elements of all three 'active' components.

The results are shown in the table below, taken from Bonoli's paper.  What the table shows is that not only does the UK spend much less than other countries when it comes to welfare-to-work, but it spends most of its budget on 'employment assistance': a policy basically limited to trying to better place unemployed people within existing jobs.

As is clear, other countries - most notably Denmark, Sweden and France - spend almost half of their welfare-to-work budget on training.  In the UK, the equivalent figure seems almost non-existent: indeed, the Conservative governments of the 1980s appeared to spend far more on training than either New Labour or the Coalition.

In times of high unemployment, there is only so far 'employment assistance' programmes - such as those that the UK government is hugely fond of - can go.  All such programmes attempt to do is make the 'matching' process faster and more efficient; they do nothing to create jobs or genuinely improve the mismatch between labour supply and demand.  Training programmes, alternatively, are capable of doing both of these things.  It's high time the government reassessed its welfare-to-work strategy to put training at its heart.

Welfare should reward contribution

A copy of this article originally appeared in Shifting Grounds 

Academics in social policy like to talk about three different types of ‘welfare state regime’. At one end of the spectrum we have the Nordic regimes: characterised by generous, universal benefits that are paid out as of right. At the other end we have the liberal regimes, where benefits are low (more or less subsistence level), means-tested and highly conditional. In between are the continental systems, where the contributory principle rules the roost.

The conundrum that Labour finds itself in is that of an increasingly liberal British welfare state. For decades the UK was more of a hybrid system, with distinct elements of all three principles: means-testing, contribution and universality. Over time though, liberal principles have taken over the welfare state and, perhaps inevitably, it is the Conservatives who are now seen as the party of welfare.

Labour thus faces two options on its welfare policy. The first is to keep ceding ground to the Coalition. This involves challenging the technical details of welfare reforms but accepting them in principle. This is the position Labour often seems to adopt and, as opinion polls show, it isn’t working.

The second option is to go beyond the liberal model of means-testing, low benefits and high conditionality. Indeed, many Labour members would like to jump straight from liberal welfare to social democratic welfare; where entitlement is universal and poverty minimal. For complex political, economic and cultural reasons, this is not going to happen – at least not overnight.

This means that if Labour wants to change – and strengthen – the welfare state it must look to ideas from elsewhere. This is where the continental system of welfare can help, with its prioritising of the contributory principle. Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne, among others on the Labour front benches, have recently shown their willingness to make it the basis of future policy. Now we need to put meat on the bones.

There are two imperatives for Labour going forward: in considering each, it becomes clear that the problem with Britsh welfare is not ‘something-for-nothing’ but ‘nothing-for-something’. The state needs to do more to recognise people’s contribution and hard work.

First then, Labour should make welfare more attractive to the middle-classes. Middle-class people support welfare when it offers them something back for their contributions. At the moment, the race to the bottom in welfare provision means that people with long records of contributions get the same as those with none. Labour’s first offer on welfare should be to establish a strong contributory principle. If you have worked for twenty years and become unemployed, you should get a decent benefit that ensures you avoid financial hardship. We should still offer basic support to young people and those without contributions, but there should be a clear principle at the heart of the welfare state: when you need it, you will get the support you have paid for.

So establishing a principle of contribution should be a priority for Labour. The next question then is how to apply this to those not covered by social insurance: young people, those with poor work histories or those who have spent time caring.

The policy response from the Coalition towards such groups has been to introduce a raft of compulsory work-based schemes with the threat of removing benefits for those who fail to comply. Participation in such schemes might – or might not – be good for unemployed people, but threats, punishments and coercion do little to strengthen the principles of contribution, reciprocity and responsibility.

Instead of threatening to punish claimants, Labour should offer to reward those who contribute whilst experiencing a spell of unemployment. If you volunteer for community work, find a work experience placement or enrol on a six-week training course, you should be rewarded with a stronger benefit: JSA Plus, for example. In return for making a contribution, you get something back. These two offers are about equal responsibilities throughout the welfare state: or, as Ed Miliband might prefer to say, a ‘something-for-something’ society.

Rather than ‘something-for-nothing’, the problem with welfare is the ‘nothing-for-something’ experience that most people have. Whether that’s paying decades worth of contributions and getting a measly benefit or undertaking compulsory work experience whilst looking for a job, most people sense the state isn’t doing its bit, despite asking them to do theirs. If Labour really wants to mark its ground with a ‘something-for-something’ welfare state, then we must look turn the tables, and look more closely at why so many people feel the state does nothing.

Why Labour should support an 'annual taxpayer statement'

In tomorrow's budget, it is expected that George Osborne will announce plans to issue annual personal tax statements in order to let citizens know precisely where their tax gets spent.  So far, the issue has been set up as one of left versus right, with some conservative commentators clearly believing the policy to be a route to lower taxes.

The theory is that if people know more specifically where their taxes go, they will be less content to pay them.  Indeed, the left-wing tax researcher Richard Murphy was on Radio 5 Live today predicting that this is precisely what will happen.  But such arguments are predicated on a misunderstanding: that 'unpopular' areas of spending, such as unemployment benefits, receive an undesirable proportion of the income tax pie.

On the Guardian's website today, there is a wonderful interactive tool which smashes these myths.  It shows how much an individual spends per day on public services (based on their income).  If we take the average salary - around £25,000 per year - we can see exactly what services cost the average taxpayer on a daily basis.

According to the Guardian's tool, here are the three most expensive services and what they cost per day for the average person:

1. Health - £4.88 per day
2. Education (including universities) - £3.77
3. Pensions - £3.59

And here are the daily costs for three services we might consider much less popular:

1. Unemployment benefits - £0.24
2. Housing -  £0.14
3. The EU - -£0.13 (meaning the average taxpayer gains 13p a day from EU membership)

What does all this tell us?  In my view, it shows us - perhaps unsurprisingly for those on the left - that the things which cost the most money are the services that benefit us all and that we most appreciate: health, education and pensions.  On the other hand, it's clear from data like this that taxpayers are not spending inordinate sums on small numbers of 'undeserving' groups.  The average earner, for example, pays just £7.30 per month to support the ever-swelling ranks of the unemployed.

Conservatives cheerily urging Osborne on with this policy might care to think again.  In future years, taxpayers might receive their annual statement from the Chancellor and think they don't get too bad a deal.  The parent of a secondary school child will see that it costs them just £252 per year to send their children to school; a snip compared to private sector rates.  Equally, we might end up realising how little we spend on needy groups.  Is it fair, for example, that all we contribute towards survivors is 8p a day?  Taken together, the public might end up thinking that the state actually does an efficient job at providing good services, while also believing the public could do a bit more for those in need.  

For years Labour has been shackled by strange and paradoxical public attitudes towards the state.  As the adage goes, the British public want Swedish social services at American rates of tax.  One reason for this might be the misconception that the UK government spends unfairly and unwisely.  Personal tax statements might be one way to combat such misconceptions that have, over a long period of time, been detrimental to British social democracy.  For that reason, Labour should support the Coalition in implementing this measure.