ABSTRACT
Households and families are seldom considered to be the relevant unit of analysis for the study of working time. Yet, despite the growing interest in finding new forms of employment and working time patterns favouring a better reconciliation of paid work and family commitments, there has been remarkably little comparative research into the determinants of participation and working time arrangements at the household level. Most studies on working time rely on individual data, disregarding the distribution of working time within and across households with different demographic, socio-economic or life-cycle characteristics. This relative dearth of research applies both within industrialized countries, where the impact of changing male and female participation on life-cycle patterns of welfare has not been widely studied, and also within the comparative research literature where there should be rich scope for analysing the impact of the different welfare state systems, employment and working time regimes on household participation and working time patterns over the life cycle.
