Choices for part-time jobs and the impacts on the wage differentials. A comparative study for Great Britain and the Netherlands

This paper uses the European Household Panel (the ECHP) to analyze individuals’ choices on part-time jobs and their impacts on the wage differentials. Our study is a comparative study between Great Britain and the Netherlands. In contrast to most of the previous researches on part-time employment, we make a distinction between short parttime and long part-time jobs. The results show that overall women were more likely to take part-time jobs in both countries, but the effect was much stronger in the Netherlands than it was in Great Britain. We find that there was no substantial wage gap between long part-time and full-time jobs in the Netherlands, working long part-time were more likely to be treated as full-time jobs, which may suggest the presence of “ retention part-time jobs “ described by Tilly (1996). On the other hand, the results show that part-time workers in Great Britain suffered relatively larger wage penalties, yet, working short parttime was not significantly different from working long part-time because they both received lower wage rates compared to full-time jobs.