Abstract
The Netherlands has been dubbed “the only part-time economy”. This expression reflects the popularity of part-time jobs in the country, particularly among working women. The beginning of the boom in Dutch part-time work can be traced back to the tripartite agreement of 1982 (the Wassenaar agreement), which dealt with issues concerning working-time reduction. Legislation that converted the option to work part-time into what was essentially a workers’ right was enacted during the 1990s. Since then, the incidence of part-time employment has been on the rise.
The views expressed herein are the authors own and do not necessarily represent those of Cedefop.
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Notes
- 1.
There has been a steady increase in the proportion of employed women working part-time. Among all women (including those working fewer than 12 h per week) the incidence of part-time employment rose from 66% in 1996 to 73% in 2005, while the incidence of part-time among women working more than 12 h per week rose from 58% in 1996 to 68% in 2005.
- 2.
There is a gender aspect to the analysis that we will not pursue here. Nor will we deal with estimation of the part-time wage gap. Likewise, we will not discuss whether workers accept part-time jobs because full-time jobs are rationed. Aggregate evidence from the Dutch labour force survey shows that in 2004 about 176 (146) thousand workers working fewer than 12 h (between 12 and 35 h) per week were trying to increase their working time and 418, 000 full-time workers were trying to reduce their working time. This suggests that it is the supply of part-time jobs that is likely to be rationed.
- 3.
For example, the retail sector has peaks in demand during Thursday evening openings and at the weekends (food retailers experience a demand peak on Sunday mornings).
- 4.
Managers perceive the motivation of part-time workers as being no lower than that of their full-time counterparts. However, about one quarter of managers tend to assess the career prospects of part-time workers as worse than those of their full-time colleagues. The perception of diminished career opportunities is stronger among workers than among managers (Riedmann et al. 2006).
- 5.
This conclusion runs counter to standard economic reasoning: assuming standard (quadratic) utility functions in income (consumption) and leisure, in that part-time workers derive higher utility from leisure than do full-time workers, other things being equal, part-time workers should receive a wage premium to reach the utility level of full-time workers. In other words, the quadratic utility functions may suffer from misspecification. The presence of a part-time wage gap and of equal utility levels among part-time and full-time workers can be reconciled by a more complex utility function that lets workers derive utility from compliance with a role standard: an identity. Membership of a group would be expressed in terms of compliance with a given norm (working time) shared by all members of the group. The members of a group may derive satisfaction by adhering to a norm consisting in an ideal number of hours worked by (and consumption level of) the group members (Akerlof and Kranton 2000; Grodner and Kniesner 2006; Hakim 2000). Similarly, workers’ utility may be affected by comparison of their incomes and wages with aspiration levels (Brown et al. 2008; Clark and Oswald 1996).
- 6.
Moreover, roles may prompt people to undertake care activities in relation to life-course contingencies; as these subside, individuals may revert to their preferred activities. Of course, individuals may decide to purchase these services from the market.
- 7.
Women’s attitudes toward labour-force participation are becoming more diversified over time. That is, human resources officers encounter very different types of women: those who have fully internalized feminine stereotypes (homemakers who would consider work less rewarding) and women who are relatively androgynous in their preferences (who would regard work as very important and rewarding). Research shows that women’s conditions have changed dramatically in the US and UK. Women’s labour-force participation (and men’s attitudes towards it) has improved, Equal opportunity practices have been introduced, the number of divorces has increased, and the number of children born to single mothers has increased as well. Moreover, gender roles have also evolved. Women in commercial jobs tend to show increasingly fewer feminine stereotypes; by contrast, men tend to exhibit an increasing number of male stereotypes (such as the breadwinner model). Hence, women tend to be more diverse than men in their work-related attitudes. Some women retain the ‘homemaker’ stereotype while others have become more similar to men, so that the spectrum of women’s preferences has widened (Konrad et al. 2000).
- 8.
Agency theory posits that, in the presence of moral hazard, firms may use incentives to induce appropriate behaviour and to induce workers to supply the optimal amount of effort (Prendergast 1998, 1999; Salaniè 1997). Such incentives are typically wage contracts and promotion and training opportunities (Gibbons and Waldman 1999; Malcomson 1999).
- 9.
- 10.
The classification of part-time jobs adopted appears to be rather accurate: 6.6% of all jobs between 30 and 35 working hours per week are full-time jobs, while 2.7% of all jobs involving more than 35 working hours per week are, in fact, part-time jobs (Dutch central bureau of statistics, survey on employment and wages).
- 11.
The nature of the variables, which measured the importance of job attributes based on a five-item Likert scale, required the use of ordered probit regression models.
- 12.
The explanatory variables included in all models requires further description. The number of hours worked was actually an interaction term between being in employment (either permanent, temporary or self-employed) and working hours (full-time, the reference group, part-time or small part-time). Financial situation was the (self-reported) ability to make ends meet (based on a five-point Likert scale). We preferred financial situation to income because of the latter’s lack of accuracy (measurement errors). All regressions included: 11 regional dummies (the 12 Dutch provinces), four tenure dummies (detailed in the summary statistics), two level-of-education variables (primary and university), age and age squared, a dummy signalling the presence of children (never significant, apart from a positive effect on the salience of the availability of childcare facilities), a dummy marking the desire to live in an urban area (never significant), four labour-market-position dummies (non-participating, unemployed, self employed, temporary contract, and permanent contract, the reference group). The list of covariates also included household composition: a breadwinner dummy, four role dummies (household head, spouse, cohabiting partner, and child or other positions).
- 13.
We report the coefficients relative to selected variables. The estimated models, however, included all controls.
- 14.
- 15.
This process takes place over time. Because women tend to remain in part-time employment for longer spells of time than their male colleagues and because the time span spent in temporary employment does not appreciably differ between sexes, ‘cognitive dissonance’ may help explain why women are more satisfied than men in part-time employment, while they are just as equally dissatisfied as men when in temporary employment (Petrongolo 2004).
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Appendix: Variables
Appendix: Variables
Wants part-time | Dummy variable, 1: individual would like to work part-time |
Labor market position | |
Permanent | Dummy variable, 1: individual has a permanent job |
Temporary | Dummy variable, 1: individual has a temporary job |
Self employed | Dummy variable, 1: individual is self employed |
Unemployed | Dummy variable, 1: individual is unemployed |
Out of the labor force (students…) | Dummy variable, 1: individual is out of the labour force |
Working hours | |
Full-time | Dummy variable, 1: individual works more than 35 h per week |
Part-time | Dummy variable, 1: individual works between 12 and 35 h per week |
Small part-time | Dummy variable, 1: individual works fewer than 12 h per week |
Jobless | Dummy variable, 1: individual works 0 h per week |
Education | |
High | Dummy variable, 1: individual holds an university de- gree or comparable |
Medium | Dummy variable, 1: individual holds a secondary school diploma (general or vocational) |
Low | Dummy variable, 1: individual holds a primary school diploma (general or vocational) |
Gender | Dummy variable, 1: woman |
Age | Individual’s age (in years) |
Tenure | |
Shorter than 1 year | Dummy variable, 1: tenure in present job shorter than 1 month |
1–2 years | Dummy variable, 1: tenure in present job between 1 and 2 years |
2–5 years | Dummy variable, 1: tenure in present job between 2 and 5 years |
5–10 years | Dummy variable, 1: tenure in present job between 5 and 10 years |
Longer than 10 years | Dummy variable, 1: tenure in present job longer than 10 years |
Unemployed l.t. | Dummy variable, 1: if life-long total unemployment spell longer than 1 year |
Households characteristics | |
Head | Dummy variable, 1: individual is head of the household |
Spouse | Dummy variable, 1: individual is spouse of the head of the household |
Partner | Dummy variable, 1: individual is (non-married) spouse of the head of the household |
Child | Dummy variable, 1: individual is the child of the head of the household |
Partner in the household | Dummy variable, 1: partner present in the household |
Breadwinner | Dummy variable, 1: individual is the breadwinner in the household |
Children | Dummy variable, 1: children are present in the household |
Urban type | Individual reports him/herself to be an urban type, much or very much |
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Russo, G., van Hooft, E. (2012). Workers’ Lifestyle Choices, Working Time and Job Attributes. In: Addabbo, T., Solinas, G. (eds) Non-Standard Employment and Quality of Work. AIEL Series in Labour Economics. Physica-Verlag HD. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2106-2_11
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