Arne Mastekaasa

Unemployment and Health: Selection Effects

A large number of studies have shown that the unemployed are less healthy, both physically and psychologically, than the employed. The explanation may be that unemployment has negative health effects. An alternative, or additional, explanation is that healthy persons are less likely to become unemployed or more likely to find new employment if they become unemployed. Such effects of health on employment status are generally referred to as selection effects. The present paper analyses to what extent such selection effects are present in the Norwegian labour market. Panel data with observations made in 1989 and 1993 are used. The analyses show that people with psychological problems are more likely to be laid off, and there is also some evidence that psychological or physical health problems may reduce the chances of finding a new job if one has become unemployed. It is of particular interest that these selection effects can be documented for a country like Norway, which has strong legislation supporting worker rights and a quite high degree of unionization.

Psychological Well-Being and Marital Dissolution Selection Effects?

The low psychological well-being of the divorced and separated could be due to the hardships of the divorce process, more general problems of unmarried living, or differential selection for divorce. Using combined questionnaire and register data on 39,000 Norwegian men and women, it is shown that psychological well-being is a strong predictor of subsequent marital dissolution over a 2-to 4-year period. The strength of the relationship is particularly strong in the short run, but remains significant throughout the period of observation. The strong short-term relationship is most probably due to hardships associated with the divorce process. The somewhat weaker long-term relationship could be due to selection effects, but the possibility that low well-being many years before the separation may be due to persistent marital problems cannot be ruled out.

Gender, Absenteeism, and Job Characteristics: A Fixed Effects Approach

It is well documented that women are generally absent from work more often than men. Using data from two large samples of Norwegian public sector employees, the authors use fixed effects methods to compare men and women who have identical job titles and work in the same workplace. Even under presumably very similar employment and working conditions, women have 1.3 to 1.7 times as many absences as men. The authors also provide strong indications that the gender difference is not due to womens greater problems in combining paid work with care for children. Because the gender difference is larger for longer absences requiring certification by a physician than for short absences not requiring such certification, the authors suggest that the gender difference in absenteeism is not primarily due to differences in work values. The difference in absenteeism is more likely to reflect general health or personality differences between men and women.

Multiplicative and additive models of job and life satisfaction

Overall job satisfaction has often been specified as a multiplicative function of the satisfaction with and the perceived importance of more specific job facets. Correspondingly, overall life satisfaction may be conceptualized as a multiplicative function of satisfaction with and importance of various life domains. So far empirical research has tended to reject the multiplicative model. Correcting for the effects of acquiescence bias and using more appropriate statistical methods than in most previous studies, the multiplicative model is here shown to fit the job satisfaction data significantly better than alternative additive models. For the relationships between life domains and overall life satisfaction, however, the multiplicative model is again rejected. Possible reasons for these diverging results are discussed.

Marital status and subjective well-being: A changing relationship?

It is well established in the literature that married people have a higher level of subjective well-being than the never married, widowed, or divorced/separated. However, previous research has yielded conflicting results on changes in the relationship between marital status and well-being. American happiness data in particular provide evidence of a declining relationship, whereas other studies suggest the opposite trend. The present study analyzes time trends in the relationship between marital status and two outcome measures, suicide rates and self-reported distress. The hypothesis that the relationship between marital status and these well-being indicators has declined during the last 10–20 years is clearly rejected. There is even some evidence that the relative position of never married men has become more unfavorable during this period. However, the causal interpretation of these trends is problematic.

The perceived quality of life in Norway: Regional variations and contextual effects

This article deals with perceived quality of life and its relationship to sociodemographic background variables in Norway. We try to answer two questions, viz (1) to what extent does the absolute level of quality of life as well as the relationships between quality of life and individual-level sociodemographic variables vary between Norwegian counties? and (2) are such variations related to specific characteristics of the various counties? Some between-county variation is found, but in most cases the pattern of variation is not replicated across surveys. For variation in the absolute level of QOL as well as in the relationship between an individuals education and QOL, however, there is a moderate degree of stability. Contextual analyses show that the relationship between education and QOL is positive and moderately strong in affluent counties, near zero or negative in economically more backward areas. The results are interpreted within the framework of a person-environment fit model.

Gender differences in educational attainment: the case of doctoral degrees in Norway

Despite strong trends in most Western countries towards gender equality in educational attainments, men are still considerably more likely to obtain doctoral degrees. Using data comprising nearly all students graduating from Norwegian universities during 1981–1996, separate event history analyses are carried out of recruitment to and completion of doctoral studies. Multilevel models are used to take both differences among individuals and among educational fields into account. With regard to recruitment, a moderate gender difference is partly accounted for by men’s higher grades. Children have no impact for either gender. The remaining gender difference could be due to discrimination, but the fact that this difference is not larger in predominantly male fields is an argument against this. There is no overall gender difference in completion probabilities. Men, however, seem more likely to drop out of their studies in applied fields, probably due to attractive opportunities in the non‐academic labour market.

The impact of downsizing on remaining workers' sickness absence

It is generally assumed that organizational downsizing has considerable negative consequences, not only for workers that are laid off, but also for those who remain employed. The empirical evidence with regard to effects on sickness absence is, however, inconsistent. This study employs register data covering a major part of the total workforce in Norway over the period 2000-2003. The number of sickness absence episodes and the number of sickness absence days are analysed by means of Poisson regression. To control for both observed and unobserved stable individual characteristics, we use conditional (fixed effects) estimation. The analyses provide some weak indications that downsizing may lead to slightly less sickness absence, but the overall impression is that downsizing has few if any effects on the sickness absence of the remaining employees.

Educational Transitions at Graduate Level Social Origins and Enrolment in PhD Programmes in Norway

The prevailing view in the research literature is that social origin has little impact on educational choices made late in one’s educational career. The article focuses on one very late transition, viz. enrolment in PhD programmes. The most important theoretical point of departure is the Breen and Goldthorpe relative risk aversion (RRA) theory. The analyses show that class origins have an impact, but only in how individuals at the very top of the class hierarchy deviate from the rest. There are also considerable effects of having parents who have themselves taken doctoral degrees and of having parents employed in higher education or research. The results do not support the RRA theory with mobility defined in terms of class, but they are consistent with a modified version in which individuals are assumed to be concerned about their educational mobility irrespective of whether or not additional education affects class position.

Organizational Contexts and Individual Behavior Potential and Limitations of the Norwegian Study of Organizations

The paper provides a description of the Norwegcan Study of Organizations and Employees (NSOE). in which data were collected at the establishment level as well as from individual employees. Research design as well as fieldwork are discussed. Using wage determination as an example. the usefulness of this kind of multi-level data collection is illustrated by means of two kinds of analysis: viz. within group estimation. to remove selectivity bias. and contextual analysis. to examine how organizational characteristics affect individual level outcomes