Unemployment insurance is an important social protection policy that buffers unemployed workers against poverty and poor health. Most unemployment insurance studies focus on whether increases in unemployment insurance generosity are predictive of poverty and health outcomes. Less work has used theory-driven approaches to understand and explain how and why unemployment insurance works, for whom, and under what circumstances. Given this, we present a realist synthesis protocol that seeks to unpack how contextual influences trigger relevant mechanisms to generate poverty and health outcomes. In this protocol, we conceptualize unemployment insurance as a key social protection policy; provide a supporting rationale on the need for a realist synthesis; and describe our process on identifying context-mechanism-outcome pattern configurations. Six methodological steps are described: initial theory development, search strategy; selection and appraisal of documents; data extraction; analysis and synthesis process; and presentation and dissemination of revised theory. Our forthcoming realist synthesis will be the first to build and test theory on the intended and unintended outcomes of unemployment insurance policies. Anticipated findings will allow policymakers to move beyond ‘black box’ approaches to consider ‘mechanism-based’ explanations that explicate the logic on how and why unemployment insurance matters.
Recent research has examined the effects of social protection on poverty and health within and between wealthy nations (CSDH (2008); Marmot, Friel, Bell, Houweling, & Taylor, 2008; Muntaner et al., 2011; Nelson, 2013). Social protection refers to policies and programs designed to prevent, manage, and overcome situations that adversely affect the well-being of individuals and populations (Norton, Conway, & Foster, 2002). Given that social protection mitigates the risks associated with common life events such as unemployment (e.g., when a worker who is actively searching for employment is unable to find work), the effects of social protection are likely to include poverty and health. In particular, unemployment insurance is a type of social protection that works in several ways to protect and support unemployed workers from adverse outcomes. Existing studies find that increases in unemployment insurance generosity are predictive of both lower poverty rates and improved health outcomes (Ferrarini et al., 2014 and Kessler et al., 1988Rodriguez, 2001, Rodriguez et al., 2001 and Scruggs and Allan, 2006). It appears that collective resources (e.g., government-sponsored cash benefits) provided during unemployment, a life event that requires additional resources, protects unemployed workers against falling into poverty or experiencing poor health (Lundberg et al., 2008). However, less work has applied theory-driven approaches to explain how and why unemployment insurance works, for whom, and under what circumstances. In this paper, we present a protocol for a realist synthesis which aims to unpack how contextual influences trigger relevant mechanisms to generate poverty and health outcomes.
