Hours of Work and Gender Identity: Does Part-Time Work Make the Family Happier?

Alison Lee Booth () and Jan van Ours ()

No 1884, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: Taking into account inter-dependence within the family, we investigate the relationship between part-time work and happiness. We use panel data from the new Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey. Our analysis indicates that part-time women are more satisfied with working hours than full-time women. Partnered women’s life satisfaction is increased if their partners work full-time. Male partners’ life satisfaction is unaffected by their partners' market hours but is increased if they themselves are working full-time. This finding is consistent with the gender identity hypothesis of Akerlof and Kranton (2000).

Keywords: part-time work; happiness; gender identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J22 I31 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-soc
Date: 2005-12
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp1884.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Hours of work and gender identity: does part-time work make the family happier? (2006)
Working Paper: Hours of Work and Gender Identity: Does Part-Time Work Make the Family Happier? (2005)
Working Paper: Hours of Work and Gender Identity: Does Part-time Work Make the Family Happier? (2005)
Journal Article: Hours of Work and Gender Identity: Does Part-time Work Make the Family Happier? (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1884

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().