The impact of individual and partner's unemployment : A quantitaive studie on depressive symptoms in Europe

Abstract: This thesis aims to see how individual and partner’s unemployment affect self-rated depressive symptoms, both for individuals separately, and for individuals in a relationship within Europe. The research questions were examined by using European Social Survey (ESS) data from 2014. An index was created in order to capture the phenomena of depressive symptoms. To investigate the effect of unemployment in relation to self-rated depression, multiple regressions analysis were used. The results show that there is a relationship between unemployment and depressive symptoms, for both men and women. However, men tend to be affected by their own unemployment only, whereas evidence was found supporting that having an unemployed partner affect depressive symptoms in a negative way for women. Hence, women are a more vulnerable group on the labour market, because they are not only affected by their own labour market status, but also by the labour market status of their partners.