Job Insecurity and Life Satisfaction in Ghana

Abstract

How labour market outcomes influence the life satisfaction of people have been studied by many scholars. In particular, prior studies have examined how perceived risk of losing one’s job affects one’s life satisfaction. We contribute to this literature by exploring whether fear of losing one’s job or not finding a job in Ghana influences one’s life satisfaction. We used data from Wave 6 of the World Values Survey to empirically examine whether job insecurity or fear of not finding a job was correlated with life satisfaction. Our results from OLS and logistic regressions show unambiguously that job insecurity did not exert a significant effect on life satisfaction among Ghanaians. We speculate several explanations for this finding, including the idea that the pervasiveness of the problem in Ghana may be the primary reason job insecurity was uncorrelated with life satisfaction in the country.