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Earner Position and Job and Life Satisfaction: Do Contributions to the Household Income have the Same Effect by Gender and Occupations?

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Abstract

Using data from the 2013 module on well-being of EU-SILC, we analyze the effects of individual household earning positions in dual-earner and sole-earner couples on job and life satisfaction by gender at different occupational levels: low-skill jobs versus the rest. Our main findings indicate that the effects of such positions differ by gender for job satisfaction, but not for life satisfaction.For women there is no relation to the type of occupation, but men in elementary occupations are more satisfied with their job if they are the main earner in the household. Meanwhile women are more satisfied with their job if they make a substantial contribution to the total earnings of the household. In fact, considering the effects of job and socio-economic characteristics such as working hours and time spent on domestic tasks, women prefer to promote their career instead of keeping the traditional role with a focus on housework. However, factors such as the gender wage gap and cultural norms that tend to allocate the best positions to men complicate achieving an equivalent earnings distribution for the two genders.By contrast, men prefer maintaining their traditional role focused on paid work, with them being the unique earner. Finally, we find gender differences in the effects of several variables on job satisfaction, on the one hand, and life satisfaction, on the other hand, which are surprisingin light of the established view that the former is a great predictor of the latter.

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Notes

  1. For ease of presentation, we use satisfaction without qualifier for job and life satisfaction taken together.

  2. Although as dependent variable we write Satisfaction (S), in general, we use this model to estimate both job and life satisfaction.

  3. Given the limitations of our data and to control for an important part of endogeneity, we include these countries dummies in our regression. Additionally, standard errors have been clustered by country.

  4. As we point out in a previous footnote, we are aware of the limitation of our data (cross-section) and we would prefer having information for many years. Nonetheless, the availability of a micro cross-section data with information on reported individual job and life satisfaction, and on a large set of control variables related to individual socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics clearly facilitates the empirical work.

  5. We will explain in the next section how we divide the occupational levels into two different groups: elementary and non-elementary occupations.

  6. The percentages for men and women of the average of these groups (major category and subcategories) are as follow: 6 (skilled agricultural) 78% men and 22% women, 7 (craft and related trades workers) 90% men and 10% women, and 8 (plant and machine operators) 76% men and 24% women. The remainder of categories present, in average, the follow percentages: 1 (commissioned armed forces officers) 67% men and 33% women, 2 (non-commissioned armed. Professionals) 50% men and 50% women), 3 (armed forces occupations) 51% men and 49% women, 4 (clerks) 33% men and 67% women, and 9 (elementary occupation) 42% men and 58% women.

  7. We have tested this and conclude that the means of job satisfaction are statistically significantly different between women and men, but we cannot exclude the null hypothesis regarding means differences for life satisfaction.

  8. The fraction 13/3 equals 52 weeks over 12 months.

  9. Gross employee cash or near cash income variable in EU-SILC (PY010G).

  10. Across EU, average part-time working hours are slightly more than half of full-time hours per week (Eurostat, LFS).

  11. Variable HY010 in EU-SILC.

  12. Particularly, we sum gross employee cash (variable PY010G in EU-SILC) by household and, then, we calculate the contribution of each member to the household (larger/equal/smaller) as the individual gross employee cash divide by the sum of the gross employee cash of all householdmembers.

  13. All these parameters are available in Table 1 of Online Appendix.

  14. As robustness check of our results, we have also performed the estimation using an ordered logit. In general, this estimation generates the same outcomes as POLS, with somewhat weakened significance for hourly income and elementary jobs for male job satisfaction and a stronger significance for other variables for both men and women. The results of this estimation, as well as, the marginal effects of the main variables are available upon request.

  15. We have run a linear combination of parameters test to check this specifically for men, which confirms it for both job and life satisfaction at a 90% level of confidence.

  16. Evidently, with other or more controls outcomes might be different.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from the Government of Spain through scholarship FPU14/1123 from the Spanish Ministry of Education is acknowledged. Also, we would like to thank Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Ana I. Moro-Egido for their helpful and relevant suggestions and recommendations on how to improve our work, as well as the editors. All mistakes are solely ours.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dpto. Teoría e Historia Económica, Universidad de Granada, C/Campus Cartuja s/n, 18011, Granada, Spain

    María Navarro

  2. Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Wiemer Salverda

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  1. María Navarro
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  2. Wiemer Salverda
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Correspondence to María Navarro.

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Navarro, M., Salverda, W. Earner Position and Job and Life Satisfaction: Do Contributions to the Household Income have the Same Effect by Gender and Occupations?. J Happiness Stud 20, 2227–2250 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-0045-5

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