Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/193349 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12055
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Many working parents struggle to balance the demands of their jobs and family roles. Although we might expect that additional resources would ease work-family constraints, theory and evidence regarding resources have been equivocal. This study uses data on working mothers and fathers – as well as their cohabiting partners/spouses – from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to investigate how personal resources in the form of skills, cognitive abilities, and personality traits affect work-life strains. It considers these along with standard measures of economic, social, and personal resources, and estimates seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models of work-life strains for employed mothers and fathers that account for correlations of the couple's unobserved characteristics. The SUR estimates indicate that computer skills reduce work-life strains for mothers, that math skills reduce strains for fathers, and that the personality traits of extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability reduce strains for both parents. However, the estimates also indicate that better performance on a symbol look-up task, which tests attention, visual scanning acuity, and motor speed, increases fathers' work-life strains.
Subjects: 
work-family strains and gains
cognitive abilities
skills
household resources
Australia
HILDA survey
JEL: 
I1
I31
J24
J81
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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