1 / 8

Weber, Work Ethic, and Well-Being–The Psychic Costs of Unemployment for Protestants

Weber, Work Ethic, and Well-Being–The Psychic Costs of Unemployment for Protestants. André van Hoorn a & Robbert Maseland b,c a Radboud University Nijmegen, Department of Economics b Radboud University Nijmegen, Department of Political Science

dewitt
Download Presentation

Weber, Work Ethic, and Well-Being–The Psychic Costs of Unemployment for Protestants

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Weber, Work Ethic,and Well-Being–The Psychic Costs of Unemployment for Protestants André van Hoorna & Robbert Maselandb,c a Radboud University Nijmegen, Department of Economics b Radboud University Nijmegen, Department of Political Science c Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne

  2. The argument in brief • Existing evidence on Protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism is limited and conceptually unsound • Alternative: value differences should be reflected in so-called “happiness functions” • Religion and the psychic costs of unemployment • Estimated with subjective well-being data • Evidence of a Protestant work ethic

  3. Evidence on Protestant ethic • Protestantism and economic performance • Not Weber’s thesis • Spirit of capitalism ≠ economic performance • Protestantism and differences in work values • Values surveys • Empirical problems: Results sensitive to changes in conditions (e.g. Clarke et al. APSR 1999) • Theoretical problems: Likely to elicit marginal preferences rather than values (Maseland and van Hoorn JIBS forthcoming)

  4. Values vs. marginal preferences • Value attached to furthering an objective is a function of current level of satiation • Do people who value leisure above work have low work ethic? • No! • People who value leisure the most are generally the people who have the least of it.

  5. Measuring values: Whatmakes Protestants happy? • Basic idea: Estimating happiness functions • How to do that? • Structure of happiness is known • E.g. marital status, health, age, economic situation • Impact of these factors differs between individuals and groups • E.g. left- vs. right-wing individuals (Di Tella and MacCulloch RES 2005) • Do Protestants “care” more about work? • Impact differences correspond to weights in happiness (utility) functions: preferences or values

  6. Method and data • Unemployment has psychic costs • Happiness = f(u,Z) • u = unemployed dummy, 0-1 • Other factors Z • Are Protestants hurt more by unemployment? • Data from World Values Surveys • Self-reported happiness, 1-4 (cardinal) • Religious denomination • Employment status • Control variables: • Health, marital status et cetera • Multilevel model: individuals nested in countries

  7. The impact of unemployment

  8. Summary & conclusionWas Weber right? • Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism • Values vs. economic performance • Values vs. marginal preferences • Solution: Happiness functions • Protestants and the impact of unemployment • Strong indications for value differences between Protestants and people from other religious denominations

More Related