ABSTRACT

One of the particular challenges of advancing the economic stress literature is that individual experience of economic stress is influenced by the interaction of multiple systems at different levels of analysis. This chapter presents an overview of economic stress literature, including a typology of economic stress constructs and a discussion of theoretical issues in economic stress literature. It discusses empirical literature on the consequences of various economic stressors, individual differences in economic stressors, and the nascent literature on multilevel economic stressors. The chapter describes a series of conceptual issues in this literature and presents an agenda for future multilevel research on economic stressors in occupational health psychology. Most economic stress research in occupational health has focused on three types of employment stressors, particularly unemployment, underemployment, and job insecurity. Individual differences can change the way individuals respond to both employment-and income-related stressors.