We consider desires for flexibility in weekly hours by analyzing changes in work hours preferences using four years of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. We control for work hours preferences in previous years and test for effects on desired labor...

Panel data from Australia are used to study the prevalence of work hours mismatch among long hours workers and, more importantly, how that mismatch persists and changes over time, and what factors are associated with these changes. Particular attention is paid to the roles played by household...

Previous research hypothesizes that long working hours are related to consumerism, the ideal worker norm, high levels of human capital, and a high cost-of-job-loss. The authors test these hypotheses using panel data on working hours for an Australian sample of full-time employed workers....

We develop a typology for understanding couple households where the female is the major earner - what we term female breadwinner households - and test it using data from the first two waves of the HILDA Survey. We distinguish temporary from persistent female breadwinner households and...

This paper uses longitudinal data from Australia to examine the extent to which overskilling -the extent to which work-related skills and abilities are utilized in current employment - is atransitory phenomenon...

The debate over whether contingent (and typically more precarious) employment acts as a bridge to permanent employment, or as a trap, has tended to focus on transitions rather than longer-run pathways. This approach cannot accurately identify indirect pathways from contingent to permanent...

This paper uses longitudinal survey data to test the degree to which measures of job insecurity are correlated with changes in labour market status. Three major findings are reported. First, the perceived probability of job loss is only weakly related to both exogenous job separations and...

Many economists and educators favour public support for education on the premise that education improves the overall well-being of citizens. However, little is known about the causal pathways through which education shapes people's subjective well-being (SWB). This paper explores the direct and...

It is widely assumed that contingent forms of employment, such as fixed-term contracts, labour-hire and casual employment, are associated with low quality jobs. This hypothesis is tested using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally...

Very little is known about how the differential treatment of sexual minorities could influence subjective reports of overall well-being. This paper seeks to fill this gap. Data from two large surveys that provide nationally representative samples for two different countries – Australia (the...