幸福生活的七大秘诀
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.
失业是人生中最悲惨的经历之一，比离婚更甚。这有一个显而易见的原因：失业后会丧失稳定的收入来源。尽管如此，与有工作、但收入相同的人相比，失业者所报告的幸福度也明显更低。失业的精神成本，一定程度上可以归因于丢掉工作所造成的社会耻辱感和对自尊心的伤害。
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.
不过，这个问题还有另外一面。虽然失业者和就业者的福祉都会因失业而降低——后者可能是因为这造成了失业的预期——但当其他很多人（比如同事、邻居、居住在同一地区的人甚至家庭成员）也失去工作时，失业现象对失业者的影响就会显著降低。
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.
巴黎经济学院(Paris School of Economics)的经济学家安德鲁•克拉克(Andrew Clark)认为，理由十分简单。当失业成为司空见惯的事情，丢掉工作对于声誉的损害就会降低。换言之，如果其他很多人也失去工作，自己失业时的感觉就会相对“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.
实际上，如果失业率达到足够高的水平，就业和失业之间的福祉差异就不复存在。一般而言，高失业率地区的平均幸福度，要低于低失业率的地区。然而，在英国，如果一个地区的平均失业率超过20%，则幸福度上的差异就会彻底消失。如果不是独自承受，那么坏事也不会显得太坏。
