Long Term Benefit or Scar: How Experience with Recessions in Young Adulthood Impacts Subjective Well-being

• In Event: 178 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 08. Health and Well-being Over the Life Course

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that the mental health workers’ well-being suffers during economic downturns. Short-term declines in job security accompanying these downturns are associated with short-term declines in both psychological and subjective well-being. This study expands prior research by exploring effects beyond full-time workers and by focusing on lasting impacts of recessions experienced during young adulthood, which is a critical period for development. Using logistic models for the General Social Survey (GSS) repeated cross-sections (1994-2014) and logistic models adjusted for individual effects across three GSS panels of three years each (2006-2014), this study finds (1) experiencing a recession in young adulthood is associated with different levels of subjective well-being depending on the length of the recession; (2) experience with a short recession in young adulthood is correlated with better subjective well-being, while experiencing a long recession scars subjective well-being; and (3) differences in temporal comparisons mediate some of these observed differences in subjective well-being.

Author

• Bryce J. Bartlett, Duke University