The transferable scars: a longitudinal evidence of psychological impact of past parental unemployment on adolescents in the United Kingdom

Using a longitudinal data of British youths, this paper explores the consequences of past parental unemployment on the current happiness and self-esteem of the children. We find that a past unemployment spell of the father has important consequences for their children and leads to them having both lower subjective well-being and self-confidence. In addition, this paper also presents evidence that both subjective well-being and self-confidence responds differently to maternal unemployment compared to paternal unemployment. In our final table, we show changes in adolescents’ well-being and self-esteem predicts educational attainments at 16. Together these findings offer new evidence of unemployment scarring on children’s livelihood.