SCARRING OR HABITUATION?: THE EFFECT OF PAST UNEMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCES ON LIFE SATISFACTION AND FERTILITY.

This research investigates two new subjects in the field of job insecurity, life satisfaction, and fertility plans: subjective job insecurity and the effect of past unemployment experiences on the relationship between job insecurity and fertility plans. The hypothesis that subjective job insecurity is important for wellbeing and fertility plans is researched. Next to this, I advance the research hypothesis that the impact of past unemployment has a habituating or scarring effect on this relationship. To offer evidence for these hypotheses, I apply techniques of mediation and moderation analysis to data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey (2010). My analysis and results suggested that subjective job security has only an effect on fertility plans when the value of subjective job security is very low. The second analysis, the mediation model, showed that life satisfaction is probably not a strong enough predictor for fertility to reach statistical significance, so it is unlikely that life satisfaction is the mechanism through which job security is associated with fertility intentions. Lastly, a habituation effect of past unemployment experiences is found for the lowest values of job security, namely no job security or currently unemployed.