Abstract
The research question in this article is threefold: To which degree is the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recession associated with reduced well-being among people in the four hardest affected EURO countries? Are individual factors associated with reduced well-being the same in these countries? and Are lower socioeconomic groups more severely hit than the better off?. Data before the crisis are compared with data in 2013/2014 (EU-SILC [European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions] survey 2013) for Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain. Finland is used as a reference category. Before control of individual characteristics, regressions demonstrate a small and mostly significant fall in average satisfaction with life in these countries, Portugal being an exception. According to the theory of capability and actual economic and political development, it was hypothesized that Greece—being the worst case in terms of economic development—may experience the greatest fall in life satisfaction. This hypothesis is not supported by the data. In fact, the strongest decline was found in Ireland. In particular, lack of political trust stands in Greece out as having an impact, while poor health is related to Ireland and unemployment to Portugal and Spain. Greatest socioeconomic inequality in life satisfaction was found in Portugal.
Highlights
Did the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic, political, and fiscal crisis during 2010 to 2012 lead to a social crisis in 2013/2014? What are the welfare effects of economic policies at the micro level on subjective well-being? This is especially a pertinent issue among those EURO-zone countries most hard hit by the crisis, the so-called PIGS-countries, that is, Portugal, Ireland Greece, and Spain.1 These are the countries in the Euro zone periphery required to adopt budget retrenchment measures (Hardiman, 2012)
The research question is threefold: Research Question 1: To which degree is the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recession associated with reduced well-being among people in the four hardest affected EURO-countries? Research Question 2: Are individual factors associated with reduced well-being the same in these countries? Research Question 3: Are lower socioeconomic groups more severely hit than the better off?
We find reduced trust in police and in the legal system especially in Greece (Helliwell & Wang, 2013)
Summary
Did the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic, political, and fiscal crisis during 2010 to 2012 lead to a social crisis in 2013/2014? What are the welfare effects of (macro) economic policies (austerity measures) at the micro level on subjective well-being? This is especially a pertinent issue among those EURO-zone countries most hard hit by the crisis, the so-called PIGS-countries, that is, Portugal, Ireland Greece, and Spain. These are the countries in the Euro zone periphery required to adopt budget retrenchment measures (Hardiman, 2012). This is especially a pertinent issue among those EURO-zone countries most hard hit by the crisis, the so-called PIGS-countries, that is, Portugal, Ireland Greece, and Spain.. This is especially a pertinent issue among those EURO-zone countries most hard hit by the crisis, the so-called PIGS-countries, that is, Portugal, Ireland Greece, and Spain.1 These are the countries in the Euro zone periphery required to adopt budget retrenchment measures (Hardiman, 2012). By contrasting the situation in these PIGS-countries before and after the crisis with that of Finland, the only Nordic country being part of the EUROzone, we may be better able to understand the most important drivers for health and subjective well-being. Earlier studies have used aggregated data for a huge number of countries (European Union [EU]/Agreement on the European Economic Area [EEA] countries or Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD] countries), or individual longitudinal data for one or two countries, but, as far as I know, have not yet compared the development in the countries presumably worst hit by the crisis with that of a non-crisis country
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