Dr Karon Gush was on BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed this week discussing her recent study of how couples coped with the threat of redundancy during the last recession.
The study, funded by the ESRC, used data from Understanding Society to analyse how couples changed their expecations, preferences and behaviours as the Recession hit home.
Karon also described the study in an article for The Conversation
“It’s long been considered that spouses (usually women) can act as a reserve army of workers, stepping in to pick up paid work when their partner loses their job.
But we found that even during times of economic crisis, this doesn’t always happen. Personal preferences, domestic and labour market constraints and issues around gender norms are all factors that stop spouses from stepping into their partner’s role as the breadwinner – except in the extreme situation where the financial survival of the household is under threat.
Through in-depth interviews with 17 couples, we explored the ways in which they coped during times of squeezed budgets and economic uncertainty. The sample was carefully drawn from Understanding Society’s Innovation Panel, an annual longitudinal survey that gathers a wealth of information about how the lives of people in UK households evolve.
From the survey data we could tell if couples had experienced some form of job loss during the period between 2008 and 2011 – arguably the worst years of the financial crisis. The sample was selected to reflect a diverse range of household and family profiles, including couples with or without children and from a range of incomes across Great Britain.”
Households’ responses to spousal job loss: ‘all change’ or ‘carry on as usual’?
by Karon Gush, James Scott, and Heather Laurie was published in the journal Work, Employment and Society – Oct 2015