While subjective well-being generally decreased in Europe during the Great Recession, some countries fared better than others. We assess how this experience varied across population subgroups and countries according to their labor market policies, specifically two types of unemployment support policies and employment protection legislation. We find both types of unemployment support, income replacement and active labor market policy (which assists the unemployed to find jobs), reduced the negative effects for most of the population (except youth); however, income replacement performed better, reducing the impacts of the Recession to a greater degree. In contrast, stricter employment protection legislation exacerbated the negative effects. This finding may be explained with suggestive evidence that indicates: legislation limiting the dismissal of employees curbed increases in unemployment but this benefit was more than offset, plausibly by perceptions of increased employment insecurity; and legislation limiting the use of temporary contracts may have exacerbated increases in unemployment. Our analysis is based on two-stage least squares regressions using individual subjective well-being data from Eurobarometer surveys and variation in labor market policy across 23 European countries.

尽管在大萧条期间，欧洲的主观幸福感普遍下降，但一些国家的表现要好于其他一些国家。我们根据他们的劳动力市场政策，特别是两种失业支持政策和就业保护立法，评估了这些经历在不同人群和国家之间的差异。我们发现两种失业支持，收入替代和积极的劳动力市场政策（可帮助失业者找到工作）都减少了对大多数人口（青年除外）的负面影响；但是，收入替代的表现更好，在很大程度上减少了经济衰退的影响。相反，更严格的就业保护立法加剧了负面影响。可以用暗示性证据来解释此发现，该证据表明：限制解雇雇员的法律遏制了失业的增加，但这种好处远远超过了抵消，这可能是因为人们对就业不安全感的增加所致；限制使用临时合同的法律可能加剧了失业的增加。我们的分析基于两阶段最小二乘回归，使用了来自欧洲晴雨表调查的个体主观幸福感数据以及23个欧洲国家的劳动力市场政策的变化。