Women's Transitions in the Labour Market. A Competing-Risk Analysis on German Panel Data

This paper analyses the transitions between the three states of non-employment, part-time and full-time work of a sample of married women living in West Germany. The questions addressed concern the dynamics of women’s labour market transitions and the association of the probability of transition with household and individual characteristics. A non-parametric duration analysis shows that woen have a similar attachment to full-time and part-time work in terms of survival, and that survival in non-employment is shorter than in the other two states. Estimates of a parametric discrete time competing risk duration model show that wives of retired husbands go into full-time work, children under 3 years have a disincentive effect on part-time work, and that part-time work is a state that German women preferto stay in and not a first step-towards full-time employment, whereas foreign women living in West Germany prefer full-time jobs.