"One shall lift the Other" - A newly funded research project on couples and unemployment

Our lab has recently received funding from the National Insurance Institute of Israel (Bituach Leumi), to study couples who are dealing with one of the partners' unemployment. Full or partial unemployment is not uncommon in Israel, and can have a variety of problematic effects on the individual, as well as at the couple and the community levels. Our new study allows us to bring our expertise in couples research to help investigate this societal problem from a new angle. We set out on this project with the idea that often, the person closest to someone newly unemployed is his or her romantic partner. It is therefore important to examine the effects of unemployment on couple dynamics, as well the specific characteristics of couples which lead to harsher or milder consequences of unemployment. It is also intriguing to try and determine what couple dynamics may lead to more effective job searches. Our study will follow couples in which one partner is fully or partially unemployed using experience sampling methods, which pose questions to both partners at various points throughout their daily lives. Ultimately, we hope this study will help identify characteristics of couples who could benefit from relational help in dealing with unemployment, and perhaps even highlight promising targets for prevention or intervention work. This project is spearheaded by Haran Sened as part of his PhD work. We are proud to say that Haran also received an Azrieli Fellowhip as well as an SPSP Heritage Award to support this work.

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