The power of the pram: do young children determine female job satisfaction?

Abstract

Policy-makers worldwide have attempted a number of strategies over the last few decades to increase female labour-force participation without jeopardizing their choice of also maintaining a fulfilling family life, should they choose to do so. One such Australian strategy heavily subscribed by females with young children has been to promote part-time employment. Results provide evidence that females with young children at home engaged in part-time employment are generally more satisfied with their working hours and work–life balance relative to those with older and no children, whilst the opposite holds when looking at those in full-time employment. This suggests that part-time employment should be pursued as a policy tool to aid females with young children maintain a relationship with the labour market without having to also give up being the primary carer of their children.

Keywords:

• job satisfaction
• gender
• part-time employment

JEL Classification:

• A13
• J16
• J28

Acknowledgements

This article uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey.

Funding

The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this article, however, are those of the authors and should not be attributed to either FaHCSIA or the Melbourne Institute.

Notes

¹ Up to 21% of inactive females with family responsibilities.

² In 2008, 44.60% of employed Australian females were in part-time work, as opposed to the OECD average of 30.52%. In the same year, Australia’s female employment to population ratio exceeded the OECD average by 8.38 points (authors’ calculations). Data from http://www.oecd.org/employment/labour-stats

³ As suggested by the latest changes in welfare payments accruing to single-parent households once their children reach school-going age. A more ideal delineation would have been 6 years of age but the data set compiled age groups in a specific manner such that this was not possible.

⁴ NK females are clearly a separate group.

⁵ The dependent variable is a discrete ordered variable. However, in our econometric model we assume it to be a cardinal variable. Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters (2004) and Clark et al. (2010) find that estimated results do not differ significantly whether one assumes happiness and/or satisfaction scores to be ordinal or cardinal.

⁶ YK represents the default dummy.

⁷ Hausman test results favour random-effects estimator over fixed effects estimator.

⁸ Full results available on request.