Conferences

Decisions on labour market participation and working hours are often supposed to be related to norms and values about gender roles and the division of (paid) labour. The shift from traditional values, which emphasize the household and caring role of women and the breadwinner role of men, to modern values, which emphasize an equal division of labour, has often been proposed as an explanation for the huge increase in female labour market participation, but also for the recent increase in part-time working fathers. Not only may values held in one’s social context affect working hours of individual men and women, they may also play a role in the way spouses influence each others’ careers. Labour market careers of husbands and wives are supposed to be related since they need to arrange their careers in such a way that there is enough income and time available in the household. In an earlier study, I have hypothesized that the normative context affects the way spouses influence each others’ careers. In times that the traditional norms were widely embraced, wives were likely to stop working as soon as the couple could afford it. This results in a negative association between husband’s resources and wife’s labour market participation. The opposite is expected in times when norms have become less traditional. Then, husbands will try to support their wives’ careers, and it will be the husbands with most resources who will be most successful in this. As a result, in modern times, there is supposedly a positive association between resources of the husband and his wife’s labour market participation.

Empirical tests for the hypotheses that the normative context affects working hours of men and women and the way spouses influence each others’ careers have either been completely absent (i.e. the observed trends are not tried to be explained) or have used indicators for normative context on the country level. Such a measure neglects the fact that much variety in values exists within a country, even at a single point in time, and it seems plausible that people adhere more strongly to norms in their direct environment than to the average norm held by the population in general. In this study, I will investigate the influence of the normative context that is more directly relevant for couples’ decisions: those of the people in the same birth cohort and with the educational level. These are supposedly the groups people can identify with without having the problem of endogeneity, which is the case if we would consider the norms of friends or of the region people live in. The research question runs as follows: To what extent does the normative context, defined as the people in the same birth cohort and with the same educational level, affect (a) working hours adjustments of men and women, and (b) the influence of the partner’s resources on working hours adjustments?

The Family Surveys Dutch Population has a retrospective design that provides us with complete labour market, relational and fertility careers of both partners, including the exact timing of events. This feature offers a unique opportunity to investigate transitions in the labour market careers within couples. Information on the normative context is lacking, however. To overcome this problem, I will aggregate information on values for each cohort x education group that will be derived from the European Values Study (waves in 1981, 1990, 1999/2000, and 2008) and SOCON (waves in 1979, 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000). Average values on working mothers and gender roles will be calculated for five-year periods. I will study transitions that take place between 1980 and 2003. Event history analysis is used to estimate the influence of the normative context on (a) the probability of a change in labour market participation (entry, exit, more hours, fewer hours) of men and women, and (b) on the effect of partner’s resources on this probability. Implications that arise from the merging of several datasets, such as comparability of samples, timing of data collection, formulation of questions, will be discussed.