The Costs of Victimization on Job Retention

Abstract

During the past decades, it has been increasingly recognized that victimization can be a life-altering experience. Previous research has shown that victims of crime and accidents report less favorable life outcomes than non-victims. This is so across a host of such lifeoutcomes, such as mental health, relationship formation, and employment. However, due to confounding it has been hard to causally link such outcomes to victimization experience and thus determining what exactly the ‘costs’ of victimization are. The present study is based on data from eight surveys collected by the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) between 2000-2009. All surveys included information about unemployment, working hours and victimization. Participants with the age of 15–65 were selected. This research aims to determine the cost of victimization on job retention by using longitudinal data in an unmatched cohort analysis (N = 18,296) and a discordant twin design (N = 1440). In the cohort analysis we see an overall decrease in unemployment for victims compared to non-victims. In the discordant twins however, there is an increase in unemployment if the event was 0–5 years ago. Looking at working fulltime versus parttime we see a decrease in working parttime for individuals who experienced a crime 0–5 years ago compared to nonvictims. When the event was longer ago (5? years) we see an increase in working part-time among the victims. The same results were found in both the MZ as DZ discordant twin pairs.