Mark Wooden

Non-Standard Employment and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from the HILDA Survey

It is widely assumed that non-standard employment arrangements, and especially casual employment, involve employment conditions that are inferior to more traditional employment arrangements. This paper uses data from the first wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to examine this issue. These data suggest that workers do not necessarily see non-standard employment as undesirable. First, workers on fixed-term contracts are more satisfied with their jobs than other workers. Second, the lower levels of job satisfaction among casual employees are restricted to those working full-time and even then the size of the effect is only marked among male employees.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey: Wave 1

In 2001 the first wave of the HILDA Survey, Australia’s first large–scale household panel survey, was conducted. This article summarises the key features of that survey.

The HILDA Survey and its Contribution to Economic and Social Research (So Far)

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey is Australias first nationally representative household panel survey. This article reviews the achievements of the HILDA Survey since its inception in 2001. It briefly describes the design of the survey and the data collection process, provides summary statistics about response and respondent characteristics, and reviews key research findings that have been published using the first four waves of data.

The Determinants of Labor Absence: Economic Factors and Workgroup Norms across Countries

The authors analyze causes of absence from work using data from a survey distributed in 1988 to workers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. The results indicate that workgroup cohesion (the degree to which employees work together closely and harmoniously) was associated with low levels of absence if job satisfaction was high, but with high levels of absence if job satisfaction was low. Some employee characteristics associated with lower rates of absence were male gender, short tenure, part-time status, and high wages; shiftwork, sick leave entitlements, and low unemployment rates were associated with higher rates of absence. The authors also find that the determinants of whether a worker was absent at least once in a given year are distinct from the determinants of the frequency and duration of absences among those workers who were absent at least once.

Working Time Mismatch and Subjective Well-Being

This study uses nationally representative panel survey data for Australia to identify the role played by mismatches between hours actually worked and working time preferences in contributing to reported levels of job and life satisfaction. Three main conclusions emerge. First, it is not the number of hours worked that matters for subjective well-being, but working time mismatch. Second, overemployment is a more serious problem than is underemployment. Third, while the magnitude of the impact of overemployment may seem small in absolute terms, relative to other variables, such as disability, the effect is quite large.

Money does not buy happiness : Or does it? A reassessment based on the combined effects of wealth, income and consumption

The paper uses household economic panel data from five countries—Australia, Britain, Germany, Hungary and The Netherlands—to provide a reassessment of the impact of economic well-being on happiness. The main conclusion is that happiness is considerably more affected by economic circumstances than previously believed. In all five countries wealth affects life satisfaction more than income. In the countries for which consumption data are available (Britain and Hungary), non-durable consumption expenditures also prove at least as important to happiness as income.

Overskilling, Job Insecurity and Career Mobility

This paper uses longitudinal data from Australia to examine the extent to which overskilling – the extent to which work-related skills and abilities are utilized in current employment – is a transitory phenomenon. The results suggest that while overskilled workers are much more likely to want to quit their current job, they are also relatively unconfident of finding an improved job match. Furthermore, some of the greater mobility observed among overskilled workers is due to involuntary job separations, and even in instances where job separations are voluntary, the majority of moves do not result in improved skills matches.

Do Explanations of Absenteeism Differ for Men and Women

Despite the consistent finding in the absence literature that women tend to be absent more often than men, little attention has been paid to whether the process of absence differs by sex. This issue is examined using data collected from 1401 Australian employees from 61 different workplaces. Hypotheses suggest that the predictive ability of job satisfaction, age, commuting time, family responsibilities, stressful life events and shift work on absence behavior differs for men and women. To test these hypotheses, a multivariate model is developed and estimated. The results indicate that there are structural differences in the absence behavior of men and women, requiring the estimation of models separately for each sex. Moreover, strong support for all but one of the hypotheses is found. These results show the critical importance of considering the sex of employees when developing explanatory models of absence.

Female Breadwinner Families: Their Existence, Persistence and Sources

We develop a typology for understanding couple households where the female is the major earner - what we term female breadwinner households - and test it using data from the first two waves of the HILDA Survey. We distinguish temporary from persistent female breadwinner households and hypothesize, and confirm, that these two groups diverge on demographic, socio-economic status (SES), labour market and family commitment characteristics. Among the persistent group we further distinguish those couples where the dominance of a female earner is related to economic factors and those where it appears associated with a purposeful gender equity strategy. We again hypothesize and confirm that these household types significantly diverge, finding that men in the economic group exhibit low SES, poor labour market position, and low levels of commitment to family, while both the women and men in the equity type often achieve positive outcomes regarding gender equity and economic and family success.

Associations between body mass index and health-related quality of life among Australian adults.

ObjectivesTo assess the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and health-related quality of life (HQoL), as measured by the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) within a sample with broad population coverage.Subjects and methodsSurvey data incorporating the SF-36 questionnaire, height and weight were obtained from a nationally representative sample of 9,771 Australians aged 21 or older (4,649 men and 5,122 women). Linear multiple regression methods were employed to estimate the magnitude of association between BMI classes and HQoL variables, adjusting for disability and other covariates.ResultsLess than 1% of men and just 3.5% of women were classified as underweight while 52.2% of women and 65.9% of men were classified as overweight or obese. For all SF-36 health dimensions, people with BMI scores in the healthy range reported, on average, higher health-related HQoL scores than underweight and obese people, and HQoL scores decreased with the degree of obesity. Although overweight and obesity were associated with decreasing levels of both physical and emotional well-being, the deterioration in health status was significantly more evident in the physical than in the mental, social or emotional dimensions.ConclusionsLow and high BMIs were associated with decreasing levels of both physical and emotional well-being, but the deterioration in health status was more consistent in the physical than in other dimensions.