Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Colin Peter Green
Author-Name-First: Colin Peter
Author-Name-Last: Green
Author-Name: John Spencer Heywood
Author-Name-First: John Spencer
Author-Name-Last: Heywood
Author-Name: Parvinder Kler
Author-Name-First: Parvinder
Author-Name-Last: Kler
Author-Name: Gareth Leeves
Author-Name-First: Gareth
Author-Name-Last: Leeves
Title: Paradox lost
Abstract: The greater job satisfaction reported by female workers represents a puzzle given, on average, their worse labour market outcomes. Using the original data source of Clark (1997), we show that over the last two decades the female satisfaction gap has largely vanished. This reflects a strong secular decline in female job satisfaction. This decline happened for younger women in the 1990s as they aged and because of new female workers in more recent years that have lower job satisfaction than their early 1990s peers. Decompositions make clear that the decline does not reflect deteriorating job characteristics for women but rather their increasingly harsh evaluation of jobs characteristics. These findings fit with the suggestion that women in the early 1990s had a gap between their labour market expectations and actual experience that has since closed and that the gender satisfaction gap has vanished as a consequence.
Creation-Date: 2016
File-URL: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/content-assets/documents/lums/economics/working-papers/LancasterWP2016_002.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Number: 107134075
Classification-JEL: J16, J28
Keywords: Job Satisfaction, Gender, Expectations
Handle: RePEc:lan:wpaper:107134075