His and her working hours and well-Being in Germany: A longitudinal crossover-spillover analysis

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between work time arrangements and personal well-being in married and cohabiting couples. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP), we study how the number of hours worked by the survey respondents and their partners influenced their own well-being. We also investigate possible transmission mechanisms between the two variables, namely income, hours spent in homemaking and care activities, and possible mismatch between desired and actual hours. Using Hybrid panel models we find evidence of different relations according to the respondent’s gender: Women report higher satisfaction with the increase of their partner’s working hours, while the opposite is true for men. At the same time, own hours have a positive effect on men’s life satisfaction, while they have the opposite effect for women. The presence of young children in the household further amplifies these results. Our conclusion is that respondents are happier when their and their partner’s behavior conforms to the roles of female homemaker and male breadwinner. Considering the absence of a strong mechanism related to time needs and time desires, we suggest those results are related to strong traditional attitudes towards gender roles and female labor force participation in the country considered.

Gender differences in unpaid care work and psychological distress in the UK Covid-19 lockdown

“…Three models are presented: an unadjusted model, a model adjusted for covariates but without baseline work hours, and a fully adjusted model. We also conducted a sensitivity analysis to test the potential ‘actor-partner’ effects [ 17 , 18 ] in the association between unpaid care work hours (housework and childcare) and psychological distress amongst couples, that is to investigate whether partner’s housework and childcare hours were related to the individual’s distress in addition to their own. To test this ‘actor-partner’ effect, we limited the sample to couples and included partner’s and actor’s hours of housework or childcare in the model as well.…”

“…Moreover, previous research on family and well-being has suggested the crossover effects of the partner, that is one’s well-being may not only depend on one’s own but also on their partners’ involvement in work and family [ 17 , 18 ]. Perceptions of equality and reciprocity within couples are likely to be important [ 13 , 19 ], so how couples divide the unpaid care work and how they make an adjustment on paid work due to unpaid care may contribute to couples’ perceptions of equity (or inequity) in a relationship, and thus potentially influence health and well-being.…”

Work-family conflict and partners' agreement on fertility preferences among dual-earner couples: Does women's employment status matter?

“…Given the declining fertility rate and the high number of women working part-time in Germany, it is also important to investigate employment variations among dual-earner couples to better understand this relationship within the German context. As prior work suggests, despite the introduction of more progressive family policies in recent years, Germany is still marked by traditional gender ideologies (Florean & Engelhardt, 2020;Geist & Brauner-Otto, 2017;Konig & Cesinger, 2015) and a legacy of policies that promote the married, male breadwinner ideal (Fleckenstein & Seeleib-Kaiser, 2011;Klammer & Letablier, 2007).…”

Well-being of academic staff in Belgium during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: a cross-sectional study

“…It is thus a subjective given and cannot be objecti ed, since "this blinds us to the subjective interpretation of the state of affairs of the person" (Antonovsky, 1979, p. 36). In western societies, however, both personal as work factors are considered to have a signi cant effect on the well-being (Florean & Engelhardt, 2020;Fukasawa et al, 2020) Prior studies suggest that health-related disasters are associated with a decline in well-being (Sprang & Silman, 2013). Yet current studies are fragmented as different groups within society are impacted in different ways.…”

“…Quite a lot of, also more specialized, attention has gone to health care workers, offering rst line help to infected people, even while knowingly putting themselves at risk (Evanoff et al, 2020). Other studies focus on the well-being of social workers (Berg-Weger & Morley, 2020;Florean & Engelhardt, 2020;Miller et al, 2020).…”