Working Time Preferences, Hours Mismatch and Well-Being of Couples: Are There Spillovers?

Christoph Wunder and Guido Heineck ()

No 471, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: We analyze how well-being is related to working time preferences and hours mismatch. Selfreported measures of life satisfaction are used as an empirical approximation of true wellbeing. Our results indicate that well-being is generally lower among workers with working time mismatch. Particularly underemployment is detrimental for well-being. We further provide first evidence on spillovers from the partner's working time mismatch. However, the spillover becomes insignificant once we control for the partner's well-being. This suggests that well-being is contagious, and the spillover is due to interdependent utilities. Females experience the highest well-being when their partner is working full-time hours. Male wellbeing is unaffected over a wide interval of the partner's working hours.

Keywords: Subjective well-being; life satisfaction; working time preferences; working time mismatch; spillovers; utility interdependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J21 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 p.
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hap, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.407851.de/diw_sp0471.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Working time preferences, hours mismatch and well-being of couples: Are there spillovers? (2013)
Working Paper: Working Time Preferences, Hours Mismatch and Well-Being of Couples: Are There Spillovers? (2012)
Working Paper: Working time preferences, hours mismatch and well-being of couples: Are there spillovers? (2012)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp471

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().