Article: Unemployment Linked to Dislike of Democracy

On 2 June, the science news site LiveScience.com published an article titled "Unemployment Linked to Dislike of Democracy" by staff writer Zoë Macintosh.

The article can be read free of charge here:

www.livescience.com/culture/jobless-opinion-democracy-system.html

Excerpts: "Individuals out of a job are more likely to harbor negative opinions about democracy and desire a rogue [sic] leader than their employed counterparts, a new study suggests. Using data from more than 130,000 people from 69 countries, scientists found that having or not having a job is enough to make otherwise similar individuals feel differently about the effectiveness of democratic political systems. [...] The results only showed correlations between these variables, but not cause-and-effect relationships. Joblessness was not linked to one's disapproval of how the country was run or the specific leadership in charge, only to discontent with democracy as a whole. [...] Across the board, those with greater wealth or education held significantly less negative opinions about democracy. [...] The results held even when scientists controlled for reverse causality (with political view causing joblessness) posed by 'political misfits' whose opinions about democracy go against the mainstream."

The article is based on a working paper by Duha Tore Altindag and Naci H. Mocan, published in May 2010 by the American research organization National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Unfortunately, the full text of the working paper is not available without paying:

www.nber.org/papers/w15994

Turkish-born Duha Tore Altindag is a PhD candidate in Economics and Turkish-born Naci H. Mocan is Ourso Distinguished Professor of Economics, both at Louisiana State University.