M. Corak, IS UNEMPLOYMENT-INSURANCE ADDICTIVE - EVIDENCE FROM THE BENEFIT DURATIONS OF REPEAT USERS, Industrial & labor relations review, 47(1), 1993, pp. 62-72
The author finds evidence that the past occurrence of a spell of insur
ed unemployment lengthens the duration of future spells. Descriptive s
tatistics from Canadian administrative data covering mid-1971 to early
1990 suggest that unemployment insurance (UI) claimants tend to spend
a longer and longer time collecting benefits with each additional cla
im they make. This finding contradicts the implication of static neocl
assical models that successive UI spells should be of the same length.
The author hypothesizes that the stigma attached to receiving unemplo
yment benefits erodes with each new UI claim an individual files.