Off to a Bad Start: Unemployment and Political Interest during Early Adulthood

It is often argued that unemployment depresses political involvement because unemployment deprives workers of important workplace-related resources. We challenge this argument from two sides. Theoretically, we argue that the resource approach neglects life cycle stages. Socialization theory suggests that workplace-related resources influence political involvement mostly during adolescence and early adulthood but not later in life. Ignoring life cycle stages therefore risks underestimating unemployment effects on young workers and overestimating them for older workers. Our second criticism is methodological. Existing literature on unemployment and political involvement largely uses cross-sectional data, which makes it impossible to eliminate unobserved heterogeneity. Using German panel data, we show that unemployment depresses the growth of political interest in early adulthood, while it does not have an effect later in life. Moreover, we find that early unemployment experiences have scarring effects that reduce the long-term level of political interest and participation.