IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/irs/cepswp/2011-09.html

Homemaking and women's well-being in Europe. Effect of divorce risk, selection and dominating gender-role attitudes

Author

Listed:
  • MIKUCKA Malgorzata

Abstract

Whereas it is known that employment affects individual well-being, the literature on the effect of homemaking is so far inconclusive. The paper investigates the effect of being a housewife on well-being of women, using European Values Study data for 36 European countries (year 2008) and multilevel regression methodology. Results show that the effect of homemaking on well-being is overall positive and it varies across countries. Three possible explanations of this variation are examined. First hypothesis concerns traditional gender-role attitudes in a country. Results confirm that in more traditional countries homemakers have higher wellbeing, but only in western Europe. Effect of individual norms is strong: housewives with traditional gender-role attitudes declare higher well-being. Second hypothesis refers to the economic risk of specialization to homemaking, and states that higher divorce risk decreases well-being of housewives. Contrary to expectations, higher divorce risk in a country is accompanied by higher well-being of housewives. I interpret this as a sign of equality concerns incorporated into legal divorce procedures. Third hypothesis concerns positive and negative selection to homemaking. Results show that the relationship between prevalence of homemaking and the well-being of housewives is curvilinear. Highest well-being gains from homemaking occur in countries with lowest and highest prevalence of homemaking.

Suggested Citation

  • MIKUCKA Malgorzata, 2011. "Homemaking and women's well-being in Europe. Effect of divorce risk, selection and dominating gender-role attitudes," LISER Working Paper Series 2011-09, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    • Handle: RePEc:irs:cepswp:2011-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.liser.lu/publi_viewer.cfm?tmp=2799
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. MacCulloch & Rafael Di Tella & Andrew J. Oswald, 2001. "Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 335-341, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1733-1749, April.
    2. Robert MacCulloch & Silvia Pezzini, 2010. "The Roles of Freedom, Growth, and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 329-358, May.
    3. Lídia Farré & Francesco Fasani & Hannes Mueller, 2018. "Feeling useless: the effect of unemployment on mental health in the Great Recession," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-34, December.
    4. Nattavudh Powdthavee, 2005. "Unhappiness and Crime: Evidence from South Africa," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 72(287), pages 531-547, August.
    5. Santiago Lago-Peñas & Elena Rivo-López & Alberto Vaquero-García & Mónica Villanueva-Villar, 2018. "Do family firms contribute to job stability? Evidence from the great recession," Working Papers. Collection C: Family business 1801, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    6. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Bernard Van Praag, 2003. "Income Satisfaction Inequality and its Causes," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(2), pages 107-127, August.
    7. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu McVey, Laura & Switek, Maggie & Sawangfa, Onnicha & Zweig, Jacqueline Smith, 2011. "The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited," IZA Discussion Papers 5799, IZA Network @ LISER.
    8. John Helliwell & Haifang Huang, 2011. "New measures of the costs of unemployment: Evidence from the subjective well-being of 2.3 million Americans," Working Papers 2011-03, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    9. Andrew E. Clark, 2015. "SWB as a Measure of Individual Well-Being," Working Papers halshs-01134483, HAL.
    10. Bruno S. Frey & Anthony Gullo, 2021. "Does Sports Make People Happier, or Do Happy People More Sports?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(4), pages 432-458, May.
    11. Francesca Acacia & Maria Cubel Sanchez, 2014. "Strategic voting and happiness," Chapters,in: A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 7, pages 160-176 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Jungmin Lee, 2007. "Stressed Out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 374-383, May.
    13. Clark, Andrew E. & Lepinteur, Anthony, 2019. "The causes and consequences of early-adult unemployment: Evidence from cohort data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 107-124.
    14. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu McVey, Laura, 2009. "Happiness and Growth the World Over: Time Series Evidence on the Happiness-Income Paradox," IZA Discussion Papers 4060, IZA Network @ LISER.
    15. Stefano Bartolini & Francesco Sarracino, 2014. "It's not the economy, stupid! How social capital and GDP relate to happiness over time," Papers 1411.2138, arXiv.org.
    16. Lora, Eduardo & Powell, Andrew, 2011. "A New Way of Monitoring the Quality of Urban Life," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 3806, Inter-American Development Bank.
    17. Mengyuan Sui & Haifeng Ding & Bo Xu & Mingxing Zhou, 2022. "The Impact of Internet Use on the Happiness of Chinese Civil Servants: A Mediation Analysis Based on Self-Rated Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-16, October.
    18. Oshio, Takashi & 小塩, 隆士 & オシオ, タカシ & Kobayashi, Miki & 小林, 美樹 & コバヤシ, ミキ, 2009. "Regional income inequality and happiness: Evidence from Japan," PIE/CIS Discussion Paper 460, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    19. Smith, Jennifer C., 2002. "Pay Cuts And Morale : A Test Of Downward Nominal Rigidity," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 649, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    20. BARTOLINI Stefano & SARRACINO Francesco, 2011. "Happy for How Long? How Social Capital and GDP relate to Happiness over Time," LISER Working Paper Series 2011-60, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:irs:cepswp:2011-09. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Library and Documentation The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Library and Documentation to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepsslu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.