The creation and resolution of discrepancies between preferred and actual working hours over the life course

Abstract

This article contributes to the analysis of working hour discrepancies, i.e., under- and overemployment, by exploring how they emerge and resolve with special consideration of the household context. It uses a rich longitudinal data set, the German Socio-economic Panel, for a discrete duration analysis controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. We focus on the most relevant household and job characteristics. Findings suggest that job autonomy plays a crucial role in the creation and resolution of discrepancies. We especially contribute to previous studies by also examining path dependence and find that both the creation and resolution of discrepancies are characterized by positive duration dependence but by negative occurrence dependence.