This proposal seeks to determine the patterns and long-term effects of employment dislocation on economic hardship and family well-being. The project studies a group of blue-collar workers who have recently lost their jobs through a plant closing. While research has documented the short term negative consequences of unemployment on family well-being, as well as the effects of economic pressure on rural farming families, the long term effect on blue collar workers is unknown. This research is particularly timely given the current economic trends which suggest that unskilled industrial employment opportunities are declining at a rapid rate. The study documents the effects of economic pressure on family distress and conflict over time, and adolescent internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Workers from two plants, one closed and one open, are compared. Within group differences of the effect of job training offered by the company on future employment opportunities and family well-being are measured over time.
The specific aims of the study are to: document long-term effects of blue-collar employment dislocation on several measures of family well-being. assess the effects of key demographic and financial characteristics of the family on economic hardship and economic pressure. identify long-term patterns and effect of re-employment over time in a sample of dislocated industrial workers. test the effects of buffer variables, such as training, social support, and family-of-origin resources, on measures of family well- being. The study uses a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design with multiple time periods. A comparison sample of employees from another plant are matched on key demographic characteristics. Two hundred seventy-five respondents, 138 from the closed plant and 137 from a comparison plant, will be selected through a stratified random sample, over-sampling minority respondents. Several reliable scale are used to measure economic hardship, economic pressure, respondent depression and anxiety (SCL-90-R), interparental conflict (CPS), satisfaction with the parent-child relationship, and internalizing and externalizing adolescent behavior (CBCL). Families will be tracked at baseline and at six month intervals over an eighteen month period. The study will provide evidence of the long term effects on family well- being of dislocated blue collar workers. It will also provide insight as to the extent training for other employment increases re-employment opportunities and buffers family hardship. Given the decline in industrial blue-collar employment opportunities, this will be the area in which future economic pressure will be the greatest for working families.
