Nicole Bosch

Is Part-time Employment Here to Stay? Working Hours of Dutch Women over Successive Generations

The Netherlands combines a high female employment rate with a high part-time employment rate. This is likely to be the result of (societal) preferences as the removal of institutional barriers has not led to higher working hours. We investigate the development of working hours over successive generations of women using the Dutch Labour Force Survey 1992–2005. We find evidence of a strictly increasing propensity to work part-time and a decreasing propensity to work full-time for the generations born after the early 1950s. Our results are in line with results of studies on social norms and attitudes. It seems likely that without changes in (societal) preferences part-time employment is indeed here to stay.

Heterogeneity in Labour Supply Responses: Evidence from a Major Tax Reform

We use a large and rich administrative household panel data set to estimate labour supply responses for a large number of subgroups in the Netherlands. The identification of the parameters benefits from a major tax reform in the data period. We uncover large differences in behavioural responses. In particular, we find differences in labour supply responses between households with and without children that are much bigger than suggested by previous studies that had to pool these household types in the estimation of preferences. An efficient tax-benefit system should take the substantial heterogeneity in behavioural responses into account.

Tax credits, labour participation and home production in the Netherlands

We set up a dynamic reduced form model of labour market participation for women who balance career and motherhood. The model accounts for the occurrence of future child birth and early retirement, and includes home production; however, it does not require the estimation of a structural model. Careful implementation of pension institutions can return optimal life patterns of participation without the need of a structural approach. The weaker theoretical framework is compensated by the rich spectrum of possible policy simulations. As illustration, we simulate the effect of two tax credits policy options on the hazard rate out of work.