幸福生活的七大秘訣

 

      Losing your job is one of life’s most miserable experiences – more so than getting a divorce. One reason for this is obvious: unemployment removes a constant stream of income. Even so, the unemployed also report substantially lower levels of happiness relative to those who are employed but have the same income. The psychic cost of unemployment can in part be explained by the social stigma and loss of self-esteem job loss entails.
       失業(yè)是人生中最悲慘的經(jīng)歷之一，比離婚更甚。這有一個顯而易見的原因：失業(yè)后會喪失穩(wěn)定的收入來源。盡管如此，與有工作、但收入相同的人相比，失業(yè)者所報告的幸福度也明顯更低。失業(yè)的精神成本，一定程度上可以歸因于丟掉工作所造成的社會恥辱感和對自尊心的傷害。
 
        There is a flipside to this, though. While unemployment lowers well-being for both the unemployed and the employed (perhaps by creating expectations of job loss), its effect on those already unemployed is notably reduced when a lot of other people – colleagues, neighbours, people living in the same region or even in the same household – are also unemployed.
        不過，這個問題還有另外一面。雖然失業(yè)者和就業(yè)者的福祉都會因失業(yè)而降低——后者可能是因為這造成了失業(yè)的預(yù)期——但當其他很多人（比如同事、鄰居、居住在同一地區(qū)的人甚至家庭成員）也失去工作時，失業(yè)現(xiàn)象對失業(yè)者的影響就會顯著降低。
 
        The reason is simple, argues the economist Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics. Where being unemployed is the norm, the impact on your reputation caused by job loss is lessened. In other words, it feels relatively OK to be unemployed when a lot of others are also unemployed.
        巴黎經(jīng)濟學(xué)院(Paris School of Economics)的經(jīng)濟學(xué)家安德魯•克拉克(Andrew Clark)認為，理由十分簡單。當失業(yè)成為司空見慣的事情，丟掉工作對于聲譽的損害就會降低。換言之，如果其他很多人也失去工作，自己失業(yè)時的感覺就會相對“好”一些。
 
        In fact, the well-being gap between the employed and the unemployed actually ceases to exist if the unemployment rate is high enough. Average happiness is typically lower in high-unemployment areas relative to low-unemployment areas. Yet, in the UK this happiness gap disappears completely when the average regional unemployment rate tops 20 per cent. Bad things don’t seem so bad when you’re not alone in experiencing them.
        實際上，如果失業(yè)率達到足夠高的水平，就業(yè)和失業(yè)之間的福祉差異就不復(fù)存在。一般而言，高失業(yè)率地區(qū)的平均幸福度，要低于低失業(yè)率的地區(qū)。然而，在英國，如果一個地區(qū)的平均失業(yè)率超過20%，則幸福度上的差異就會徹底消失。如果不是獨自承受，那么壞事也不會顯得太壞。