The Impact of Marital Status on Work Hours: A Quantitative Study of European Labor Market from Gender Perspective

Abstract

This article examines the effects of marital status to the gender gap in employment hours. This article uses linear regression analysis with data from the European Social Survey Round 8. Stata/SE 16 is used to analyze the data collected from 18 European countries to explore the research questions. Previous literatures identify some determinants of work hours such as demographic characteristics, the division of household labor, job characteristics, and country-level determinants (e.g., welfare state, work-hour regulations, family policies, part-time labor force participation etc.), but there are few studies on marital status as determinant of work hours. This article finds that there is an interaction among marital status and work hours to the different levels of gender. This article shows that there is a gender inequality in the European labor market, where men’s work hours are more than women’s work hours. Unmarried women work less hours than any other studied categories of marital status (e.g., married, divorced).