Unemployment, return migration, and immigrant mortality: The case of the Great Recession in Spain

In this paper, we exploit the strong incidence of the Great Recession in Spain to estimate the effect of economic conditions on participation in Disability Insurance (DI). Using individual panel data, we show that increases in the local unemployment rate are associated with a reduction in the individual probability to enter the DI program during the Great Recession in Spain. Using aggregate data on applications, we show that this procyclical behavior of DI awards comes from an increase in the proportion of applications that are denied. Thus, contrary to the previous literature that has extensively reported a countercyclical behavior of DI participation, our results provide new evidence that, in periods of extremely recessionary conditions, DI participation may turn procyclical.

Theory and Practice of Crisis in Political Economy: The Case of the Great Recession in Spain

espanolLa Gran Recesion en Espana trajo consigo nuevas formas de hacerse adulto. Aunque la precariedad laboral y las dificultades para emanciparse no son nuevas, por primera vez las cohortes jovenes iban a confrontar un futuro poco alentador. A medida que la crisis se profundizaba, se extendia la sensacion de que las desventajas que tambien habian experimentado cohortes anteriores no eran esta vez un estado transitorio en el que los individuos iban a soportar las adversidades bajo la expectativa de que, mas pronto que tarde, iban a alcanzar un puerto seguro, donde disfrutarian de los privilegios caracte-risticos de la vida adulta. En este articulo examino los procesos sociales y politicos que conducen a estos sentimientos de vulnerabilidad subjetiva durante la Gran Recesion, asi como las diferentes reacciones a estos nuevos horizontes. En la ultima seccion, la atencion se concentra en las estrategias politicas de los dos principales partidos en el panorama espanol, PSOE y PP, para acomodar las nuevas demandas e incertidumbres de los jovenes. The Great Recession in Spain has created new paths leading toward adulthood. While labour precariousness and difficulties leaving the parental home are not new, this was the first time that younger generations faced bleak long-term prospects. As the crisis deepened, it became increasingly evident that the disadvantages experienced by former generations, this time would not be temporary, with any hope that individuals could endure a period of hardship before reaching, sooner rather than later, the safe harbour where they would eventually enjoy the privileges of adulthood. In this article, I examine the social and political processes that produced sentiments of subjective vulnerability during the Great Recession and different reactions to the new prospects. The last section focuses on the political strategies employed by of the two main political parties in the Spanish landscape, PSOE and PP, to accommodate the new demands and uncertainties faced by young people. DeutschThe Great Recession in Spain has created new paths leading toward adulthood. While labour precariousness and difficulties leaving the parental home are not new, this was the first time that younger generations faced bleak long-term prospects. As the crisis deepened, it became increasingly evident that the disadvantages experienced by former generations, this time would not be temporary, with any hope that individuals could endure a period of hardship before reaching, sooner rather than later, the safe harbour where they would eventually enjoy the privileges of adulthood. In this article, I examine the social and political processes that produced sentiments of subjective vulnerability during the Great Recession and different reactions to the new prospects. The last section focuses on the political strategies employed by of the two main political parties in the Spanish landscape, PSOE and PP, to accommodate the new demands and uncertainties faced by young people.

Effects of the great recession on drugs consumption in Spain

The financial crisis of 2008 precipitated the “Great Recession”. In this scenario, we took Spain as a country of study, because although it experienced significant negative shocks associated with macroeconomic variables (GDP or unemployment), its welfare indicators have been marked by limited changes. This study used data from waves 2 and 4 (years 2006–2007 and 2010–2012, respectively) of the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Specifically, through logistic regressions we have analysed the effects of socioeconomic, demographic, health and “Great Recession” factors on the quality of life (QoL) of elders in Spain. Although QoL did not change too much during the “Great Recession”, the results confirmed the importance of several factors (such as chronicity) that affect the satisfaction with the QoL among the older people. In this regard, statistically significant effects were obtained for individual exposure to recession. Therefore, a decrease in household income in the crisis period with respect to the pre-crisis period would increase by 44% the probability of reporting a low QoL (OR = 1.44; 95% CI: 1.00–2.07). Furthermore, gender differences were observed. Health and socioeconomic variables are the most significant when determining individual QoL. Therefore, when creating policies, establishing multidisciplinary collaborations is essential.

This paper studies the intergenerational impact of parental job loss on school performance during the Great Recession in Spain. Collecting data through parental surveys in a school in the province of Barcelona, I obtain information about the parental labour market status before and after the Great Recession. I can then link this information to repeated information on their children’s school performance, for a sample of over 300 students. Using individual fixed effects, the estimates show a negative and significant decrease on average grades of around 15% of a standard deviation after father’s job loss. These results are mainly driven by those students whose fathers suffer long unemployment spells. In contrast, the average impact of mother’s job loss on school performance is close to zero and non-significant. The decline in school performance during the Great Recession after father’s job loss, particularly among disadvantaged students, could result in detrimental long-term effects that might contribute to increased inequality. This could be an important and underemphasised cost of recessions.

This chapter provides a diagnosis of the economic ill-fare of Spanish children since 2008 with the objective of assessing the impact that the Great Recession has had on them. The results show children’s great economic vulnerability to changes in the business cycle. The Great Recession has had important consequences on the economic well-being of many children—not only because of the sky-high unemployment rates of the adults that look after them, but also because of the lack of a generous and comprehensive social protection system that can be relied upon when the economy slows down. Notwithstanding this, it is important to remember that child poverty was a major social problem in Spain before this economic downturn.

Demand drops and innovation investments: Evidence from the Great Recession in Spain

In this paper, we examine the effects of unemployment, immigration and emigration on fertility variation during the Great Recession in Spain, while taking account of trans-spatial relationships. Using a spatial Durbin approach and panel data with observations from 50 Spanish provinces, we investigate the impact of an increase in unemployment on fertility and ask whether, and to what extent, fertility has been affected by reduced immigration and increased emigration following the economic crisis of 2008. Our results suggest that unemployment has had a strong negative impact on fertility during the recession, and that the impact of the total unemployment rate was primarily confined to the province where the unemployment occured, although with significant spillover effects from female unemployment. Further, although female immigration was reduced during the recession, it nevertheless continued to have a positive impact on fertility, and its impact seems to matter both directly (own-province) and indirectly (spillover). Finally, our results show that increased emigration had a negative and indirect (spillover) impact on fertility. These findings contribute to the debate on the relationship between unemployment and fertility during the Great Recession, and demonstrate that both international immigration and emigration have affected province-level fertility and should therefore be given serious consideration in any analysis of fertility during the current long recessionary period.

The Great Recession has led to gender convergence in aggregate unemployment rates. In this paper we seek the sources of this recent convergence. We use Social Security records to study the determinants of unemployment ins and outs for men and women over the course of a whole business cycle, i.e. 2000-2013. We focus on Spain – a country hit hard by unemployment increases in downturns. We find an enormous decrease in job access rates during the recent downturn which reaches 15 pp. for men and 8 pp. for women. Lack of demand and negative state dependence emerge as key sources, affecting men more negatively than women. In a scenario of upcoming recovery, our simulations show that unemployment outs will increase particularly for short-term male unemployed, which suggests that gender convergence in unemployment rates will not persist for short-term unemployed workers. However, both male and female long-term unemployed - 64% of total unemployed workers, will face enormous difficulties to access a job even in an expansionary context.

The Great Recession had led to gender convergence in unemployment rates. In this paper we seek its sources to assess whether this convergence will remain once the Great Recession ends. We use Social Security records to study the determinants of unemployment ins and outs for men and women separately, over the course of a whole business cycle, i.e. 2000–2013. We focus on Spain—a country hit hard by unemployment increases in downturns. We find that unemployment outs are crucial in understanding changes in unemployment rates in Spain as well as to understand the gender convergence in unemployment rates. Among the determinants of the large drop in unemployment outs, lack of demand and negative state dependence emerge as key sources, which affect men more negatively than women. In a scenario of upcoming recovery, unemployment outs will increase for short-term unemployed, particularly for males. On the contrary, both male and female long-term unemployed workers will face enormous difficulties to access a job, as the job access rates for long-term unemployed is not sensitive to the economic cycle. Hence, we expect that the gender convergence in unemployment rates will persist only when considering the long-term unemployed.

The complex and multidimensional economic crisis experienced by Spain since 2008 significantly altered migration patterns in this country. Large scale unemployment contributed to slow down migrant inflows and accelerated out-migration flows in Spain. The media coverage of these processes created a distorted image of the patterns of migration affecting Spain during the crisis. Although the incipient economic recovery has not had a major impact in terms of modifying the migration dynamics triggered by the crisis, the media attention to this issue has substantially decreased without questioning its previous approach to the phenomenon. This article presents extensive data from a wide range of sources covering the period 2008–2016 to extract detailed information about the reality of crisis-era migration flows in Spain, and discusses the extent to which the media treatment of the issue has contributed to a partial and misleading view of the causes and consequences of the new Spanish emigration.

We exploit plausibly exogenous geographical variation in the reduction in domestic demand caused by the Great Recession in Spain to document the existence of a robust, within-firm negative causal relationship between demand-driven changes in domestic sales and export flows. Spanish manufacturing firms whose domestic sales were reduced by more during the crisis observed a larger increase in their export flows, even after controlling for firms' supply determinants (such as labor costs). This negative relationship between demand-driven changes in domestic sales and changes in export flows illustrates the capacity of export markets to counteract the negative impact of local demand shocks. We rationalize our findings through a standard heterogeneous-firm model of exporting expanded to allow for non-constant marginal costs of production. Using a structurally estimated version of this model, we conclude that the firm-level responses to the slump in domestic demand in Spain could well have accounted for around one-half of the spectacular increase in Spanish goods exports (the so-called `Spanish export miracle') over the period 2009-13.

The paper explores working class couples' experiences of female‐breadwinning during the Great Recession in Spain. It examines the extent to which couples' adaptations to these gender‐atypical work‐family arrangements have led to processes of (un)doing gender. The study is based on the analysis of 24 semi‐structured biographical interviews and life history calendars with men and women in 12 heterosexual couples who have gone through different breadwinning statuses during their trajectory. Findings show that men whose partners were primary breadwinners for a period make the greatest effort to preserve the male‐breadwinner illusion. In contrast, female breadwinners identify with a co‐breadwinner model and do not understate their own economic contribution. Men's insufficient participation in housework and child care is experienced by women with disapproval, which turns into open conflict when the women perform the bulk of such work. The paper concludes that adaptation to unconventional arrangements can constitute a catalyst for processes that undo gender, but more qualitative longitudinal research is needed to determine how economistic and normative factors interact dynamically across different countries and social groups in shaping these processes.

This study examines the relationship between unmet healthcare needs and employment status, with a focus on how this relationship was influenced by the Spanish economic recession of 2008-2012. Data were obtained from the Spanish National Health Survey for 2006 and 2011-2012. The outcome variable was the presence of unmet healthcare needs, describing its reasons. The analysis included the period (pre-crisis/crisis), demographic variables (sex, age, Spanish citizenship), employment status, social factors (level of education, marital status, social-class), and health indicators (self-assessed health, chronic conditions, and limitations). Logistic regression was used to predict unmet health needs based on the period, employment status, and control variables. The frequency of unmet healthcare needs was low and decreased further during the crisis (5% pre-crisis vs 3% during the crisis). Unmet healthcare needs were more strongly associated with health status than with employment status. However, among the unemployed, unmet healthcare needs increased during the crisis compared to the pre-crisis. The most vulnerable groups, characterized by higher unmet healthcare needs, included women, individuals with lower levels of education, and those in poorer health. These groups may require more targeted attention. These findings should be interpreted in the context of the Spanish National Health System, which is fully decentralized and provides healthcare and protection to all residents.