Back-to-Front Down-Under? Part-Time/Full-Time Wage Differentials in Australia

33 Pages Posted: 8 Sep 2006

See all articles by Alison L. Booth

Alison L. Booth

Australian National University (ANU) - Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Margi Wood

Australian National University (ANU) - Faculty of Economics & Commerce

Date Written: August 2006

Abstract

In 2003, part-time employment in Australia accounted for over 42% of the Australian female workforce, nearly 17% of the male workforce, and represented 28% of total employment. Of the OECD countries, only the Netherlands has a higher proportion of working women employed part-time and Australia tops the OECD league in terms of its proportion of working men who are part-time. In this paper we investigate part-time full-time hourly wage gaps using important new panel data from the first four waves of the new Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. We find that, once unobserved individual heterogeneity has been taken into account, part-time men and women typically earn an hourly pay premium. This premium varies with casual employment status, but is always positive, a result that survives our robustness checks. We advance some hypotheses as to why there is a part-time pay advantage in Australia.

Keywords: part-time, full-time, efficiency hours, gender

JEL Classification: J16, J22, J31

Suggested Citation

Booth, Alison L. and Wood, Margi, Back-to-Front Down-Under? Part-Time/Full-Time Wage Differentials in Australia (August 2006). IZA Discussion Paper No. 2268, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=928819 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.928819

Alison L. Booth (Contact Author)

Australian National University (ANU) - Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS) ( email )

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200
Australia
+61 2 6125 3285 (Phone)
+61 2 6125 0182 (Fax)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Margi Wood

Australian National University (ANU) - Faculty of Economics & Commerce ( email )

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601
Australia

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
98
Abstract Views
2,744
Rank
533,914
PlumX Metrics