Alessandro Di Nallo: Job loss and divorce: worse for disadvantaged couples?

In Episode 12 of the DIAL Podcast, Alessandro Di Nallo from the University of Lausanne talks about his research looking at the links between job loss and divorce for couples to see if the likelihood of separating is greater for more or less advantaged couples.

The heterogeneous effect of job loss on union dissolution. Panel evidence from Germany, Switzerland and the UK is research presented at the DIAL Mid Term Conference in June 2019.

Transcript

Alessandro Di Nallo: Job loss and divorce: worse for disadvantaged couples?

In Episode 12 of the DIAL Podcast, Alessandro Di Nallo from the University of Lausanne talks about his research looking at the links between job loss and divorce for couples to see if the likelihood of separating is greater for more or less advantaged couples.

The heterogeneous effect of job loss on union dissolution. Panel evidence from Germany, Switzerland and the UK is research presented at the DIAL Mid Term Conference in June 2019.

Christine Garrington  0:00 

Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In today’s episode we’re talking about the lengths between job loss and divorce, and whether the risk of separation is greater for less advantaged couples. Our guest is Alessandro Di Nallo from the University of Lausanne who started by explaining some of the context of his research.

Alessandro Di Nallo  0:21  

Job loss and unemployment in general is a stressful event. It triggers a reaction within the couple that eventually increase the level of stress, decrease the perception of attractiveness with the partner, and ultimately also reduce the wellbeing of partners. The alternative channels through which, unemployment can also be dangerous for a couple’s stability could be the self-perception of attractiveness. As the partner who loses his job or her job is considered to be less attractive than he was supposed to be before losing his job. So this decreasing in attractiveness may ultimately lead to the couple to separate, to split up.

Christine Garrington  1:06  

What do you want to look at specifically? And why in your research in this area?

Alessandro Di Nallo  1:12  

We want to look at the different effect of unemployment of the male partner and the female partner, they're rarely treated in the literature. And we also wanted to see whether the ethical unemployment changes according to the level of partnership income so does it affect more comfortable advantaged couple or disadvantaged couple.

Christine Garrington  1:39  

You used two long running studies which track the lives of people in Germany and in the UK over many years, tell us a bit about the data you use, how you could use it to look at this question of whether being out of work increases the risk of separation?

Alessandro Di Nallo  1:53

Yeah, so we collected data from two long running studies. The GSOEP, the German survey that's been running since the early 1980s, and to produce surveys. BHPS Understanding Society, that has been running since 1991 combined. We focussed on heterosexual couples in their working age, and that have been in the survey for at least two years. This is important. And then we ended up with even more than 40,000 couples for each survey. Then we separated the couples into two groups, the couples who have experienced a spell of unemployment of at least two months, and those who never did. So the first group is called the treated group, and the second one is the control group. And then we run our sort of quasi experimental methods that is called difference in difference, trying to assess whether the separation rates of the treatment group after experiencing unemployment, were systematically lower, or below the level of the control group. We use an additional method that is called causing and site matching that allows us to pair treated capitals with the comparable couples in the control group according to characteristics such as age, age differences between the partners, education, social class and other characteristics.

Christine Garrington  3:14  

Let’s turn them to some of your findings. Can you talk first about what you found for men and women in the UK?

Alessandro Di Nallo  3:20  

So in the UK we found that couples from which men, experienced unemployment, were more likely to separate by how much. Let's see around 1.5 percentage point more than control factor couples. So for instance, if the average predicted probability for separation control factor couple is about, slightly above 2 percent, 1.5 more means 3.5 percent. This risk increases to an extra three percentage point one year after the couple experience males’ unemployment. Well we didn’t find significant effect when it comes to female unemployment. Men’s unemployment is probably more dangerous for a couple of abilities that men take home a larger share of family income.

Christine Garrington  4:08  

And what about for Germany?

Alessandro Di Nallo  4:10

We find more consistent results in Germany. We found extra risk of separation for both couples in which men and women experience unemployment and the extra risk, extra probability of separation ranged between two and three percentage points more with respect to the control factor couples.

Christine Garrington  4:28  

Out of all of those facts and figures what are the key ones to take away would you say? Sort of what do we learn?

Alessandro Di Nallo  4:34  

So we learned that men’s unemployment is definitely dangerous for couple’s stability. And that this extra risk of separation is about 5%, 4-5% on a yearly basis. In, on the first year of unemployment and for a four-year window after unemployment.

Christine Garrington  4:53  

One of the things you took into account is how much people earned. Did that matter? Was that, was that relevant?

Alessandro Di Nallo  4:58  

Low income families are more prone to separation, probably because they don't have enough resources, financially in the first place to absorb the stress, and to deal with costs due to separation.

Christine Garrington  5:12

And in terms of what we learn from your research about how unemployment can impact on relationships then what would you say?

Alessandro Di Nallo  5:20

There are reasons for which couples should remain together. Another reason that pull couples apart. So we're not saying that there are the only reasons that pull couples apart. Some mechanisms incentivise couples to stay together such as facing legal fees, increasing childcare costs, housing costs, all these kinds of things probably incentivise the couples to be together. But probably the challenge through which stress increases partnership instability is the prevailing one. We're able to say that among the two channels stress is the overwhelming part.

Christine Garrington  5:56  

Okay so stress is really key. Now policy makers in both of these countries, and indeed elsewhere, are very keen to keep couples and families together for all sorts of reasons. What can they take away from your findings and from your research would you say?

Alessandro Di Nallo  6:09  

So, we also find that less advantaged couples tend to split up when they are hit by unemployment, and they are significantly more so. So, it means that they are particularly exposed to increasing risk, deriving from separation - as I told you direct costs, childcaring and so on. Which impact on a larger fraction of household income for the low income family. So these are hidden costs of separation which taxation reform might relieve at least in part. There's also some research, highlighting the fact that couples that are more prone to separation have probably characteristics that lead them to be more prone to job loss. I'm talking about undesirable individual traits, such as personality disorders, anti-social tendencies, mental health problems. So this triggers a problem of self-selection of these couples into both unemployment and instability. And that's why we're looking for alternative methods that approach a causal link between unemployment, and separation. 

Christine Garrington  7:15  

So where did your research go from here?

Alessandro Di Nallo  7:17  

we'd like to analyse alternatives, an additional country would probably include Switzerland in our analysis, and then we'd like to explore more the reason why man’s unemployment is so more consequential for couples’ stability or instability in the UK, other than in Germany, and probably we're looking at how the division of resources and the participation to income pooling within the family is organised in the two countries. 

Christine Garrington  7:46 

The heterogeneous effect of job loss on union dissolution. Panel evidence from Germany and the UK is research presented at the DIAL mid term conference in June 2019. You can find out more about the NORFACE funded DIAL projects at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which is presented and produced by Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.