The Work-Life Conflict and Well-Being of Turkish Employees

Using data drawn from the 2004 European Social Survey, we examine the determinants of the life satisfaction of employees in Turkey. The data reveals that the majority of Turkish wage and salary workers is under- or over-employed. The share of matched workers in the full sample is only 22 percent while about half the workers have to work longer than they desire. Gender is closely linked with the hours mismatch status, as the share of over-employment is 8 percentage points higher among female workers than men. Ordered probit model estimates reveal that over-employment (measured as the difference of the actual and preferred weekly number of hours) has a negative impact on well-being. We attribute the lack of a statistically significant finding with regard to under-employment to the small sample size. We also find no statistically significant difference between male and female employees with regard to the impact of the working hours mismatch. This finding suggests that the gender differences which would have been expected in this context are already incorporated in the respondents’ subjectively determined desired hours of work.