Is workers' health more sensitive to losses than gains in job security? While loss aversion, whereby losses loom larger than gains, is typically examined in relation to decisions
about anticipated outcomes, I first show using a large sample of workers from the European Household Community Panel and valueadded models that losses in job security have
a larger effect on health than equivalent job security gains. Second, I address endogeneity
issues using the 1999 rise in the French Delalande tax as a quasinatural experiment. It
allows evaluating separately the causal impact of exogenous gains and losses in job security on workers' health. Difference-in-differences estimation results confirm that lower
job security generates significant and robust losses in self-assessed health. Meanwhile a
greater feeling of job security does not translate into a higher level of self-assessed health.
These results are in line with the predictions of the model linking job security to health
under the hypothesis of loss aversion built in this paper. This article also demonstrates
that losses in health induced by lower job security are not transitory.
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