Unemployment and Rape

. . . this paper shows the existence of a positive relationship between unemployment and rape. (p. 14).

That is from this paper by Raul Caruso. The paper has other interesting conclusions, and the data is from Europe.  
HT: Eve-Angeline Lambert.

Unemployment and Crime (Germany)

I have not seen much literature on the way in which unemployment affects crime. One reason might be that unemployment might affect crime, and crime might affect unemployment as well. In other words these variables affect each other and isolating the effect of one over the other is difficult. 

This study researches exactly that. The paper is very technical but the main finding is that  unemployment explains housing burglary. 

The abstract

More specifically, we find that youth unemployment plays a prominent role in explaining property crime, namely housing burglary. Our results are in line with previous research: neglecting endogeneity of unemployment understates its impact and employing the youth unemployment share instead of rate points to distinctive effects. The analysis offers important implications for countries that are currently undergoing fiscal consolidation and are experiencing high unemployment rates.

The study is by Povilas Lastauskas & Eirini Tatsi. And the name of the paper is "Spatial Nexus in Crime and Unemployment in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Germany." 

Notice the unemployment rate in what used to be East Germany.

To do a similar study in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, or South Asia is very difficult because the data of unemployment is not usually reliable, and there is a lot of people employed in the informal sector. 

Home-ownership and Unemployment

This study explores the hypothesis that high home-ownership damages the labor market. We show that rises in the home-ownership rate in a U.S. state are a precursor to eventual sharp rises in unemployment in that state. The elasticity exceeds unity: a doubling of the rate of home-ownership in a U.S. state is followed in the long-run by more than a doubling of the later unemployment rate. What mechanisms might explain this? We provide evidence that rises in home-ownership are associated with three potential concerns: (i) lower levels of labor mobility, (ii) greater commuting times, and (iii) fewer new businesses. Our argument is not that owners are disproportionately unemployed, nor that the observed patterns are due to Keynesian effects. The evidence implies, instead, that the housing market may produce negative 'externalities' upon the labor market. The time lags are long. That gradualness may explain why these patterns remain little-known.

That is from a paper by David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald.
May be some entrepreneurs are right after all.

Unemployment insurance, job search, and Google

We use Google search data to construct the first high-frequency, location-specific index of job search activity (JSI). After showing the JSI’s validity, we study the effect of increased unemployment insurance (UI) on job search activity. We show that indi- viduals on UI search less than individuals who are unemployed and not receiving UI and that individuals with 0 to 10 weeks of UI remaining search 2.1 times more than those with more than 10 weeks left. We document that the JSI temporarily decreases by 2.1% to 3% in the 4 weeks after expansions and extensions in UI policy. While extensions in unemployment insurance do drive temporary changes in job search, the immediate effects of expansions or expansions are unlikely to result in large changes to unemployment rates.

That is from the paper "The Impact of Unemployment Insurance on Job Search: Evidence from Google Search Data"(Baker & Fradkin, April 2013).

HIV Status and Labor Market Participation (South Africa)

We find that being HIV-positive is associated with a seven percentage point increase in the likelihood of being unemployed. South Africans with less than a high school education are close to 11 percentage points more likely to be unemployed if they are HIV-positive. HIV status confers a disadvantage despite high unemployment rates, and reinforces existing inequalities in South Africa.

From the paper "HIV Status and Labor Market Participation in South Africa" by Levinsohn et al., forthcoming in the The Review of Economics and Statistics. A 2009-draft is here. 

US Unemployment Duration

Source.

Unemployment

The graph is from the working paper "The United States Labor Market: Status Quo or A New Normal?" by  James & Spletzer (September 2012). From the conclusion: 

During the recent recession, unemployment rates rose to very high levels and then started to retreat. At the same time, some industries, like construction, manufacturing, and retailing, experienced disproportionately large increases in unemployment. But the patterns observed on the way up were mirrored on the way down.  Those industries that contributed much to the increase in unemployment between 2007 and 2009 were the same that accounted for decreases in unemployment since 2009. 

The same is true for mismatch, which measures the difference between vacancies and unemployed in an industry, occupation, or location. Industrial mismatch rose substantially during the recent recession, but retreated just as quickly even as unemployment rates have remained high. What happened on the way up happened symmetrically on the way down.

Unemployment and the Democratic Electoral Advantage

This article calls into question the conventional wisdom that incumbent parties are rewarded when unemployment is low and punished when it is high. Using county-level data on unemployment and election returns for 175 midterm gubernatorial elections and 4 presidential elections from 1994 to 2010, the analysis finds that unemployment and the Democratic vote for president and governor move together. Other things being equal, higher unemployment increases the vote shares of Democratic candidates. The effect is greatest when Republicans are the incumbent party, but Democrats benefit from unemployment even when they are in control. The explanation for these findings is that unemployment is a partisan issue for voters, not a valence issue, and that the Democratic Party “owns” unemployment. When unemployment is high or rising, Democratic candidates can successfully convince voters that they are the party best able to solve the problem.

Source: Wright (American Political Science Review, September 2012). I did not find the full paper online.  

Smoking and unemployment

This paper estimates the effect of involuntary job loss on smoking behavior and body weight using German Socio-Economic Panel Study data. Baseline nonsmokers are more likely to start smoking due to job loss, while smokers do not intensify their smoking. Job loss increases body weight slightly, but significantly. In particular, single individuals as well as those with lower health or socioeconomic status prior to job loss exhibit high rates of smoking initiation.

That is from the paper "Does Job Loss Make You Smoke and Gain Weight?" by Jan Marcus (March 2012). 

Kriegbaum et al (2011) find a similar result regarding job losses: "the numbers of job losses and of broken partnerships were both inversely associated with probability of smoking cessation."

Do people suffer less when unemployment is widespread?

You could think that unemployment is particularly hard on you if you are unemployed when everybody else is employed. This implies that if you are unemployed and almost everybody else is unemployed too, then you do not feel as bad. Well, this new paper, "Regional Unemployment and Norm-Induced Effects on Life Satisfaction" by Chadi, finds that there is no consolation, the suffering is the even larger:

While rising unemployment generally reduces people’s happiness, researchers argue that there is a compensating social-norm effect for the unemployed individual, who might suffer less when it is more common to be unemployed. This empirical study, however, rejects this thesis for German panel data and finds individual unemployment to be even more hurtful when aggregate unemployment is higher. On the other hand, an extended model that separately considers individuals who feel stigmatised from living off public funds yields strong evidence that this group of people does in fact suffer less when the normative pressure to earn one’s own living is lower.

Unemployment duration and personality

This is from the paper Unemployment Duration and Personality by Uysal and Pohlmeier, published in the December 2011 number of the Journal of Economic Psychology.  

[W]orker’s job search intensity is decisively driven by her personality traits, reflected in her propensity to motivate and control herself while searching for a job. Moreover, personality traits, in as far as they can be signaled to a potential employer, may also enhance the probability of receiving and accepting a job offer.

For our econometric duration analysis, we use the well-accepted taxonomy “Big Five” to classify personality traits. Based on individual unemployment data taken from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) our empirical findings reveal that the personality traits Conscientiousness and Neuroticism have a strong impact on the instantaneous probability of finding a job, where the former has a positive effect and the latter has a negative effect. The direction of the effect on the subsequent employment duration is the opposite. We do not find any significant effects of the personality traits Extraversion and Agreeableness on the duration of unemployment. The personality trait Openness eases finding a job only for female unemployed workers and workers with migration background.

This is the Wikipedia definition of Conscientiousness

[I]s the trait of being painstaking and careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's conscience. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization, deliberation (the tendency to think carefully before acting), and need for achievement. It is an aspect of what has traditionally been called character. Conscientious individuals are generally hard working and reliable. When taken to an extreme, they may also be workaholics, perfectionists, and compulsive in their behavior. People who are low on conscientiousness are not necessarily lazy or immoral, but they tend to be more laid back, less goal oriented, and less driven by success.

This is the Wikipedia definition of Neuroticism

It is an enduring tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, guilt, and depressed mood. They respond more poorly to environmentalstress, and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification. Neuroticism is associated with low emotional intelligence, which involves emotional regulation, motivation, andinterpersonal skills. It is also a risk factor for "internalizing" mental disorders such as phobia, depression, panic disorder, and other anxiety disorders (traditionally called neuroses).

If unemployment is also a cause of neuroticism, one can suspect the presence of poverty traps here . . . I don't know if that is the case.