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  • br Background br Methods br Results br Discussion

    2018-11-05


    Background
    Methods
    Results
    Discussion The hypotheses and whether they were supported are summarized in Table 6. The results indicate that, contrary to prior research on health generally or negative health behaviors such as smoking, own unemployment is not associated with negative changes in physical activity. Thus, there is no evidence for H1. Rather, there are no changes in physical activity for men associated with unemployment, and for women the changes are positive. The result for women is consistent with H2 and the Grossman model of health capital whereby these unemployed women invest more time in their health through physical activity when they have more free time because of reduced labor supply. This is also consistent with Xu\'s (2013) findings about the relationship between employment and activity, where entering the labor force was associated with reduced physical activity. A partner\'s unemployment is also not associated with changes in physical activity for men, contrary to H4, but it JNK inhibitor is marginally significantly negatively associated with changes in physical activity for women. There are also larger changes with the unemployment of the male partner than the female partner, though for women only, which is consistent with H5. Economic support in marriage is thought to be a more important benefit for women compared to men (Ross et al., 1990), which could be part of the reason why women experience negative changes when partners become unemployed. Women may also increase their time in the labor market to help reduce the economic hardship arising from the unemployment, and this may be feasible since they are less likely to have been working full time than men. Such an increase in labor supply would reduce time available for exercise, consistent with the Grossman model of health capital. In supplementary analyses (not shown), I do not find evidence of changes in work hours for women after a partner\'s unemployment, but women are about 3 percentage points (p<.05) less likely to be OOLF when their partners are unemployed compared to when their partners are employed, suggesting some women may enter the labor force in response to the partner\'s unemployment. A third possibility is that, consistent with normative gender roles, women\'s responsibility for emotional work may lead them to cut back on physical activity during a partner\'s unemployment to provide additional emotional support to the family. Overall, as noted, the associations differ by gender, consistent with H3, though unemployment does not seem to be detrimental for physical activity for either gender in the same way it seems to be associated with negative health behaviors such as smoking. Nonetheless, the fact that women experience positive changes in activity associated with unemployment, while men do not, suggests that the stigma associated with unemployment for men or the threat to masculinity that may occur with unemployment may hinder men\'s ability to take full advantage of the unemployment spell for increasing their participation in the investment of health capital through additional time in physical activity. Finally, the results are consistent with H6, indicating that the changes in physical activity occur mainly at the intensive margin (increases in participation amount conditional on participating) rather than at the extensive margin (participation vs. no participation). This is consistent with early findings about the determinants of physical activity (e.g., Dishman et al., 1985), which indicated that barriers to physical activity such as time and resources may not be important to those who do not engage in activity and instead may be most salient to those who are already active. Thus, starting physical activity is very different from continuing or modifying activity, and this suggests that it is a somewhat unique health behavior, compared to other behaviors such as smoking. Second, the results demonstrate the importance of studying unemployment and health at the dyadic level. Prior research on unemployment in families has indicated the importance of studying both partners for understanding labor supply and time in housework (e.g., Gough & Killewald, 2011). A small amount of research has examined the dyad with regard to unemployment and mental health (Mendolia, 2014, Westman et al., 2004). The negative results for women that are seen with a partner\'s unemployment, in contrast to the positive results for women seen with own unemployment suggest that we cannot simply concern ourselves with the health outcomes of the unemployed themselves, but we also need to consider their partners, and likely, in future studies, their children\'s health behaviors or health outcomes as well. This is consistent with the premise of the Family Ecological Model (Okechukwu et al., 2014), which is a promising theoretical framework for studying the family-level impacts of unemployment in future studies.