Transitions to part-time work at older ages: the case of people with disabilities in Europe

This paper analyses the labour-force transitions of older workers with disabilities in general, particularly workers’ transitions to and from part-time employment within a European context. Using the two first waves (2004 and 2007) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we compare transitions between employment statuses for disabled and non-disabled individuals, even after controlling for different disability trajectories. In addition, we employ a multivariate framework to examine the determinants for remaining in part-time work in 2007 for those individuals who were part-timers in 2004. The results show that older people with long-term disabilities have a higher probability of staying in a part-time job than their compared counterparts. Policy-makers must promote part-time employment as a means of increasing employment opportunities for older workers with disabilities and support gradual retirement opportunities with flexible and reduced working hours.     

Ungrateful slaves? An examination of job quality and job satisfaction for male part-time workers in the UK

Research on part-time work has concentrated over many decades on the experiences of women but male part-time employment is growing in the UK. This article addresses two sizable gaps in knowledge concerning male part-timers: are men's part-time jobs of lower quality than men's full-time jobs? Are male part-timers more or less job-satisfied compared to their full-time peers? A fundamental part of both interrogations is whether men's part-time employment varies by occupational class. The article is motivated by the large body of work on female part-timers. Its theoretical framework is rooted in one of the most controversial discussions in the sociology of women workers: the “grateful slave” debate that emerged in the 1990s when researchers sought to explain why so many women expressed job satisfaction with low-quality part-time jobs. Innovatively, this article draws upon those contentious ideas to provide new insights into male, rather than female, part-time employment. Based upon analysis of a large quantitative data set, the results provide clear evidence of low-quality male part-time employment in the UK, when compared with men's full-time jobs. Men working part-time also express deteriorating satisfaction with jobs overall and in several specific dimensions of their jobs. Male part-timers in lower occupational class positions retain a clear “lead” both in bad job quality and low satisfaction. The article asks whether decreasingly satisfied male part-time workers should be termed “ungrateful slaves?” It unpacks the “grateful slave” metaphor and, after doing so, rejects its value for the ongoing analysis of part-time jobs in the formal labor market.     

Le temps du remue-ménage. Conditions d'emploi et de travail de femmes de chambre

It is now admitted that part-time work is a signal of inequality between the sexes, in both work and family. By focusing on cleavages among women, an analysis is made of how worktime and the company’s position as a subcontractor combine so as to produce inequality among wage-earners by assigning them heterogeneous statuses and thus forcing some of them to cope with precarious working, employment and living conditions. This study of the working and employment conditions of chamber maids in France focuses on those who work part or full-time in cleaning companies under contract with other firms. Inside this rather unskilled group of women, part-time work stresses the differences produced by subcontracting and worsens the inequality between stable, full-time employees and the women subcontracted at part-time who do the same job. These cleavages set off a strike among these part-time workers. Analyzing this labor dispute has shed light on the social relations running through the firm and on invisible issues in work and employment for these women with jobs in the shadows.     

The impact of part-time employment on union density

Because part-time employees are less likely to be unionized than full-timers, increases in part-time employment may lower unionization rates. However, the size of the reduction, after controlling for other factors, has not been estimated. My results obtained from a probit analysis indicate that part-time status has a small, but significant, negative effect on the probability that a worker is a union member. Not surprisingly, as the working hours of part-time employees decrease, the negative effect increases. The results of this analysis also show that the negative effect of part-time variables had decreased between 1973 and 1989. I thank Darold T. Barnum of the University of Illinois, Chicago and Richard U. Miller of the University of Wisconsin, Madison for their valuable comments and support.     

Jobs for Mothers: Married Women's Labor Force Reentry and Part-Time,Temporary Employment in Japan

This paper explains the increase in middle-aged women reentering the labor force in Japan and their concentration in part-time or temporary employment. Existing explanations attribute women's concentration in part-time employment too narrowly to supply or demand factors. In Japan, both the labor supply of middle-aged women and the demand for part-time workers have increased, but these conditions channel middle-aged women into part-time or temporary employment only when systematic barriers obstruct their access to full-time jobs. Because it plays an important role in women's employment decisions, the rigidity of standard, full-time employment needs greater attention in studies of nonstandard, atypical types of work.     

Part-time Employment and Effects on Australian Social Work Students: A Report on a National Study

Abstract

University students, nationally as well as internationally, engage in employment to supplement income while studying. Social work students are no different in this respect. There have long been questions about whether such part-time work has an adverse impact on student academic performance. This paper explored the experiences of social work students enrolled on-campus across three Australian universities as reported through a survey and focus groups. The research found that social work students did engage in significant amounts of paid employment while studying, that there were both positives and negatives for students depending on the nature of their employment, and that compromises needed to be made in juggling competing responsibilities. Accessing and living on inadequate government benefits imposed particular stressors. The findings have implications for the ways in which social work education is structured, especially in terms of flexibility, and demonstrated that part-time work also offers opportunities for student learning.     

Working part‐time: achieving a successful ‘work‐life’ balance?1

The role of part-time employment in the balancing of women's employment and family lives has generated an immense literature. Using data on women working part-time and full-time in different level occupations in the British Household Panel Survey, this paper argues that it is now vital to move these balancing debates on from their location within work-family rhetoric and to re-position the study of women's working time in broader work-life discussions. Work-family debates tend to neglect a number of key domains that women balance in their lives, in addition to family and employment, including their financial security and their leisure. The paper shows that examining the financial situations and the leisure lives of female part-timers in lower level jobs reveals a less positive picture of their 'life balancing' than is portrayed in much work-family literature. Instead, they emerged as the least financially secure employees and, linked to this, less satisfied with their social lives too. It is concluded that since the work-life system is multi- and not just two-dimensional, it is important to examine how all life domains interrelate with each other. In this way, we would be in a better position to begin to assess all the benefits and disadvantages associated with working part-time and with other work-life balancing strategies.     

Public policy and part-time employment

VI. Conclusions What are the policy implications of these findings? One thing is clear: Recently employers have avoided hiring full-time employees. With the dramatic slowing in the growth of full-time jobs has come a rise in the relative importance of part-time employment, particularly of the involuntary kind. The root cause of this phenomenon is suggested by the history of the past two decades, which contain periods of both extremely weak and very strong full-time job growth. The pattern is obvious: When there is strong full-time job growth, involuntary part-time work fades in importance. One other pattern is also evident: The periods of relatively weak full-time job growth and increasing importance of involuntary part-time employment are also times of growth in levels of income taxation and the volume of governmental regulation. By contrast, the period of very pronounced growth in full-time employment and reduced incidence of involuntary part-time work is characterized by lowered income tax rates and the relaxing of governmental regulations. From the policy standpoint, it appears that if involuntary part-time work is a problem, the most direct way to deal with it is to return to the economic policies of the 1981–1989 era that generated such remarkable overall job growth in the American economy.     

Appraising a Dichotomy: A Review of ‘Part-time/Full-time’ in the Study of Women's Employment in Britain

A key theme in women's studies is the move away from an over-reliance on treating the sexes as two separate groups onto theorizing diversity amongst women. The limitations of a ‘sexual dichotomism’ in the face of diversity is well-recognized, yet in mainstream research into women's experiences diversity is far from being a popular area of study. The tendency in the literature on women's employment is still to oversimplify any divisions into broad groupings, and in particular into dichotomies. Focusing on the popular dichotomy of part-time/full-time employment, the paper highlights two roles that the dichotomy has been expected to perform. The success it has achieved and the problems it has faced in performing these two roles are examined. The conclusion is that whilst the part-time/full-time dichotomy is particularly valuable in depicting two differentiated labour market positions, a move beyond the dichotomy would facilitate a greater understanding of the variations in women's employment experiences over the life-course. The theoretical progression from dichotomizing to disaggregation is ready to happen in the field of women's employment.     

Polarization in Mothers' Employment

Using secondary analysis of large, nationally representative government data sets, we explore the interaction of occupational class and the age of youngest child in mothers' labour force participation. We show that levels of full-time working vary markedly in each occupational class and by age of youngest child. Within part-time working, the principal form of labour force participation for mothers, there are marked class differences in eligibility for ‘short-term’ and ‘long-term’ employment rights, as well as in the ‘quality’ of part-time working. We suggest that the impact on mothers' employment of the age of the youngest child is mediated by mothers' occupational class and conclude that there is growing evidence of polarities in the employment experience of mothers in different occupational classes.     

Cleaning time,protest time: employment and working conditions for hotel maids

It is now admitted that part-time work emphasizes the inequalities between the sexes in both spheres of work and family, but this article rather focuses on the cleavages among women themselves. An analysis is provided of how working time and the company's position combine so as to produce inequalities among female wage-earners, assigning them heterogeneous statuses, thus exposing some of them to precarious employment, working and living conditions. The study concentrates on chambermaids working part-time and full-time in the French subcontracting context of cleaning companies. Part-time work stresses and confirms the differentiations produced by subcontracting and worsens the inequalities within this group of female workers who yet do the same tasks. These cleavages have set off strikes, and the analysis of this labor dispute sheds light on some social relations running through the firm, as well as the invisible concerns for the employment and work of these women working behind the scenes.     

Full-time, part-time employment and life satisfaction of the elderly

There is continued interest in employment and subjective well-being among the elderly because of the increasing proportion of elderly population in the labor force. This study investigates the association between part-time and full-time employment and life satisfaction of the elderly in Taiwan. We also examine how these associations may differ across socio-demographic groups. An ordinal treatment effect model is developed to accommodate the discrete feature of the employment decision and the potential endogeneity of these two outcomes. Using a unique sample of the elderly in Taiwan, in contrast to findings for the general population of the previous studies, we find that part-time employment is significant and positively associated with life satisfaction, while elderly with full-time employment have lower life satisfaction. These results are robust across socio-demographic groups.     

Swedish fathers choosing part-time work

In Sweden, both parents have a legal right to reduce their working hours to 30 hours per week. Quantitative analysis of 20,000 Swedish parents with children aged between 2 and 7, however, shows mothers to be 14 times more likely to work part time than fathers. Gender imbalance in parents’ part-time employment is thus even more pronounced than in their parental leave take-up, at least in Sweden. An analysis of 14 in-depth interviews with Swedish fathers who have chosen parental part-time work reveals that part-time work represents for them a way to reconcile their separate identities as professionals and as involved fathers. Nevertheless, this study revealed that certain difficulties of a more structural nature complicated this solution for these men; these issues included, in the first place, a strong full-time norm prevailing in male-dominated workplaces, and traditional ideals of masculinity centred on men's breadwinning role. Furthermore, ideals of gender equality and involved fatherhood also showed themselves as having an impact, enabling new masculine positions for part-time working fathers to emerge.     

Maternal employment and food produced at home: evidence from Japanese data

This paper examines whether mothers’ labor supply discourages home production, focusing on food preparation at home in Japanese families. Although empirical studies on home production are usually conducted using time use data, we use data collected by scanners, which cover daily goods purchased by over 10,000 households over 3 years. Based on the composition of daily food expenditures for foods consumed, we measure how many products are made using time-consuming processes at home, and examine if time-consuming home production is discouraged by mothers’ employment away from home. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity among households using the panel structure of our scanner data, we first show that mothers’ out-of-home employment has a negative effect on home cooking. This effect is shared across economic classes, particularly when mothers work part-time, as compared with non-working mothers. Second, we show that this negative effect is more apparent in the low economic class. Households in this class show a particular decrease in time-consuming home cooking, especially when the mothers work part-time. Third, the smaller negative effect among the higher class can be explained by stronger health-consciousness and aversion to less-healthy products in this class.     

Trends in Women's Career Patterns and in Gender Occupational Mobility in Britain

This paper uses retrospective data from the SCELI surveys to make a detailed investigation of changing career patterns and gender differences in occupational status over the period 1946–86. A summary variable is developed and used to examine the relationships between changing employment trends and respondents' occupational status. Occupational status, as the Hope-Goldthorpe scale value, is measured throughout the life-course and changes over time are examined. The main findings of the study are that despite the increase in women's qualifications and the proportion of women in the workforce, their human capital has not greatly increased although their careers have become increasingly variable. Men and childless women experience occupational status increasing over life-course and time but part-time employed women do not. Class of origin is more important to status for men than for women, while qualifications are important for both. Women's careers are increasingly affected by discontinuity and part-time employment.     

Underemployment and depression: longitudinal relationships

We conceptualize employment status not as a dichotomy of working versus not working but as a continuum ranging from adequate employment to inadequate employment (involuntary part-time or low wage) to unemployment. Will shifts from adequate to inadequate employment increase depression as do shifts from employment to unemployment, and to what extent does prior depression select workers into such adverse employment change? We analyze panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for the years 1992-1994 for the 5,113 respondents who were adequately employed in 1992. Controlling for prior depression, both types of adverse employment change resulted in similar, significant increases in depression. These direct effects persisted despite inclusion of such potential mediators as changes in income, job satisfaction, and marital status. Marital status buffered the depressive effect of both types of adverse change, but education and job dissatisfaction amplified the effect of unemployment on depression. Prior depression did not predict higher risk of becoming inadequately employed but did predict increased risk of unemployment, particularly for those with less education. These results confirm that both unemployment and inadequate employment affect mental health, and they invite greater efforts to monitor the extent and impact of underemployment.     

Labor Market Penalties for Mothers in Italy

We use a large Italian employer-employee matched dataset to study how motherhood affects women’s working career in terms of labor force participation and wages. We confirm that the probability of exiting employment significantly increases for mothers of pre-school children; however, this is mitigated by higher job quality, human capital endowment and childcare accessibility. Most importantly, the availability of part-time jobs reduces their probability of moving out of the labor force. Women not leaving employment after becoming mothers experience lower wages than women with no pre-school child, and there are no signs of this gap closing 5 years after childbirth. Contrary to previous literature, the wage gap penalty emerges only among women working full-time, thanks to the high protection accorded to part-time jobs in Italy.     

Working Hours Flexibility and Timing of Retirement: Findings from Europe

This study investigates how flexibility in working hours affects retirement timing. It tests the assumption that decreasing weekly working hours delays retirement and extends working life. Using data from four waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), we analyze whether a shift from full-time to part-time work delays retirement. Results show that older workers who reduce their working hours retire earlier than those who stay in full-time employment. The effect is stronger in Central and Eastern Europe than in Scandinavian countries. No interaction effects for gender and work strain are found. We conclude that part-time work at the end of the career, as a means to extend working life, should be reevaluated.     

Employment Behaviors of Mothers Who have a Child with Asthma

The effects of having a child with asthma on the employment status and the continuity of full-time employment of mothers were investigated using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Mothers who had a child with asthma were less likely to be employed full-time or part-time, and if single, they were less likely to retain their full-time jobs than other mothers. The effects of having a child with asthma depended on the marital status of the mother and the well-being of the child. Employment behaviors of single mothers were affected more than those of married mothers. The bed days of children reduced the prevalence and continuation of full-time employment for single and married mothers.