On a Quest for Happiness: Gender Disparities in the Optimal Work-Life Balance

This study explores the relation between an individual’s labor market participation and job and life satisfaction, considering heterogeneity in this relationship between gender and within those groups of men and women. The empirical analysis, based on the Dutch Labor Supply Panel, provides evidence for a difference in the effect of employment and different forms of labor participation on the life satisfaction of men and women. In general, men are happiest when participating in the labor market and have highest life satisfaction when working full-time, while for women in general, no differences in life satisfaction are found between the unemployed, part-time and full-time workers. Having the responsibility for the informal care of someone else, children living at home, or a partner, are found to moderate the work-happiness relationship. When men have informal care giving responsibilities, life satisfaction turns out to be lower when participating in the labor market than when being unemployed. Furthermore, men having children at home are happier working part-time than when not participating, while this difference is not found for men without children at home. When comparing women with and without a partner, it is found that women with a partner are happiest working full-time, while women without a partner seem to be happiest when not working at all.