Work orientation and wives' employment careers: an evaluation of Hakim's preference theory

This article uses a nine-year period of work-life history data from the British Household Panel Survey (1991-1999) to examine married/cohabiting womens work trajectories. In particular, it tests some major contentions of Hakims (2000) preference theory. Both supportive and opposing evidence for the theory has been found. First, concurring with Hakims arguments, women who have followed a home-career path hold consistently more home-centred attitudes over time than women who have been committed to their employment careers. Moreover, it is found that presence of dependent children has little or no negative effect on a work-centred womans chance of being engaged in full-time work. But the findings could not rule out the possibility that womens employment careers are still constrained. The most work-centred women (as revealed in their gender role attitudes in the nine-year period), despite having been committed mostly to a full-time work, still have displayed a certain degree of discontinuity in their career pursuits. Finally, contrary to corollary of the preference theory, the relationship between gender role attitudes and womens participation in labour market work is reciprocal rather than unidirectional. That is, womens work orientation is endogenous to their labour market experiences

Measuring housework participation: the gap between 'stylised' questionnaire estimates and diary-based estimates

This paper forms part of the project Gender, Time Allocation, and the Wage Gap funded by the ESRC Gender Equality Network. It has been greatly improved as a result of my discussions with Professor Jonathan Gershuny. It has also benefited from comments received from my Time Use Group colleagues, participants at the International Association for Time Use Research Conference 2005, and seminar participants at the Institute for Social and Economic Research

Measurement error in stylised and diary data on time use

We investigate the nature of measurement error in time use data. Analysis of stylised recall questionnaire estimates and diary-based estimates of housework time from the same respondents gives evidence of systematic biases in the stylised estimates and large random errors in both types of data. We examine the effect of these measurement problems on three common types of statistical analyses in which the time use variable is used as: (i) a dependent variable, (ii) an explanatory variable, and (iii) a basis for cross-tabulations. We develop methods to correct the biases induced by these measurement errors

Infusing time diary evidence into panel data: an exercise in calibrating time-use estimates for the BHPS

In this paper, we calibrate a set of time use variables for a long-running panel survey (the British Household Panel Survey, BHPS, 1994 2004) from evidence derived from a smaller scale panel survey that collected time use information by both the survey method and the diary method from the same respondents (the Home On-line Study, HoL, 1999 2001). Past research has suggested that the time diary method produces more accurate and reliable measures of time use than the survey approach. The diary approach, however, usually has a low response rate and is not practicable for a large-scale panel study like the BHPS. On the other hand, direct questioning in survey interviews is a relatively flexible approach to collect time use data. We therefore propose a method to combine the strengths of the survey approach and the diary method to produce time use data. The survey part of the HoL study shares the same questionnaire-derived time-use predictor variables with the BHPS. We use regression of the predictors on the time diary data in the HoL study to calibrate time use in the BHPS by multiplying the resulting regression coefficients with the same predictor variables in the BHPS. Then we get a calibrated index of time-use patterns based on BHPS questionnaire items. The calibrated time use variables cover all major categories of daily activities and are available in Wave 4 (1994) to Wave 14 (2004) of the BHPS. They are useful resources for the study of time use practices and the life course

Savings, investments, debts and psychological well-being in married and cohabiting couples

This paper builds on the existing literature about the distribution of financial resources within the household between couple members. Using data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) we examine the ownership of, and amounts held in savings, investments and debts by couple members, and how these vary by individual and household characteristics. A particular focus is the extent to which financial resources derived from paid employment are allocated within the household through the ownership of assets and debts by couple members. We also examine the relationship between the ownership of assets and liabilities with individual psychological well-being

Two-Stage Optimal Matching Analysis of Workdays and Workweeks

We apply Optimal Matching (OM) at two stages for the analysis of workdays and workweeks using data from the UK 2000 Time Use Survey. We only employ substitutions but no insertion or deletion when calculating the distance matrix between sequences. The costs are defined according to the transitional frequencies of events at a given time. Our study demonstrates how OM can be adapted to the number of periodicities and theoretical concerns of the topic by adjusting its costs and parameters. There are 7 main types of workweeks in the UK and standard workweeks account for only 1 in 4 workweeks

The gendered impacts of partnership and parenthood on paid work and unpaid work time in Great Britain, 1992-2019

Using data from the British Household Panel Study and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (1992–2019), this study investigates the impacts of partnership and parenthood on women's and men's paid work and unpaid work time and how these impacts have changed in the last three decades in Great Britain. We applied two fixed-effect models—one conventional, one novel—with individual constants and slopes to account for the selection and longitudinal changes in time use. We found that the gender-traditionalizing effect of partnership on the use of time has weakened over the years. Marriage did not affect women's and men's paid work time, and since the 2010s, marriage no longer affect women's and men's time spent on housework differently. However, motherhood continues to reduce women's paid work time substantially, and the extent of this impact has remained unchanged over the previous three decades. Partnership and parenthood have resulted in minor changes to men's paid work and unpaid work time; the extent of their effects has likewise remained modest over the previous three decades. Our findings suggest that in Britain, the gender revolution of the division of labor among parents has stalled, and family policies have not successfully increased mothers’ paid work time and fathers’ unpaid work time

A Two-Stage Optimal Matching Analysis of Workdays and Workweeks

International audienceWe study the scheduling of work by using optimal matching analysis. We show that optimal matching can be adapted to the number of periodicities and theoretical concerns of the topic by adjusting its costs and parameters. Optimal matching is applied at two stages to define workdays and workweeks at the first and second stage respectively. There were five types of workdays and seven types of workweeks in the UK between 2000 and 2001. Standard workdays represented just over a half of workdays and standard workweeks constituted one in four workweeks. There were three types of part-time workweeks

Three-Stage Transitional Theory: Egalitarian Gender Attitudes and Housework Share in 24 Countries

How does the association between gender attitudes and housework share vary across countries and time? We examine the second demographic transition as it unmasks in the association between gender attitudes and housework participation. Using data of the 2002 and 2012 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) for 24 countries, we find that the association between gender attitudes and housework share became stronger over time in most countries, signifying that the Second Demographic Transition was in place. The results also show that the association varied across the 24 countries, reaching an equilibrium in many but at different stages. Our findings suggest that equilibria in the domestic division of labour take various forms and paces in the ISSP countries

Human capital and social position in Britain: creating a measure of wage-earning potential from BHPS data

This paper develops a continuously scaled indicator of social position (the Essex Score), which is estimated as individuals potential wage in the labour market. The Essex Score is designed as a tool to investigate patterns of differentiation in life chances. It is constructed based on individuals educational qualifications, recent experience in employment and non-employment, and occupational attainment using data from all the currently available 13 waves of the British Household Panel Survey. The Essex Score represents those embodied economic resources salient to individuals participation in the labour market, equivalent to human capital in economic literature, and sometimes indicated by social class categories in sociological research. It has advantages over other social class measures. Being based on educational levels and on degrees of present and past attachment to the labour market as well as on present or previous occupational membership, it covers the entire adult population irrespective of their employment status and employment history. Its continuous level measurement also allows aggregation of scores from an individual to a household level, as well as the sensitive investigation of the determinants and consequences of changes in social position during the life course