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This contribution investigates the link between female labour force participation and household income inequality using data from the Swiss Household Panel (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014). Through index decomposition analyses, we find that female labour force participation has slightly attenuated household income inequality over time. Women's entry into the labour market, higher work percentages within part-time work -but not the shift from part-time to full-time work -and the weak correlation in partner's earnings have contributed to this effect. Keywords: female labour force participation, income inequality, part-time work, index decomposition, household types Erwerbstätigkeit der Frauen und Ungleichheit der Haushaltseinkommen in der SchweizZusammenfassung: Dieser Beitrag untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen der Erwerbsbeteiligung der Frauen und der Ungleichheit der Haushaltseinkommen anhand der Daten des Schweizer Haushalt-Panels (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)

At the beginning of the 2000s, Switzerland went through two global recessions: the Dotcom crisis and the Great Recession. Even though Switzerland experienced milder effects compared to its European neighbours, the Swiss unemployment rate increased considerably compared to its status quo. This paper explores the resilience of vulnerable groups to these economic downturns using both objective (income poverty and material deprivation) and subjective (wellbeing and satisfaction with the financial situation) indicators of quality of life. To analyse how quality of life evolved since the early 2000s, we use a longitudinal database: the Swiss Household Panel. Studying both objective and subjective indicators, results suggest that the dot-com crisis had a stronger negative effect than the Great Recession on vulnerable groups. This was particularly true for single parents and large families. Disadvantaged groups during the first crisis reacted in different ways during the second crisis. Some groups (the unemployed, the low-educated and the solo self-employed) experienced some scarring effects sometimes only according to objective indicators; others were resilient and continued with their normal trends (migrants and the young), whereas the most strongly affected groups during the first crisis (single parents and large families) registered an improvement in their conditions in the second crisis. These results point to a combination of subjective and objective indicators to evaluate the effects of recurrent crises on vulnerable groups.

Fuelled by federal stimuli of 440 million Swiss francs, the staggered expansion of childcare in many cantons allows the evaluation of this family policy on female labour supply. With new cantonal data, this study analyses both the decision to participate in the labour market and the intensity of participation. Empirical results of difference-in-differences regressions show that mothers work at higher percentage rates if they live in cantons that have expanded their childcare services more than the national average. The reform stimulated part-time employment of between 20 and 36 h per week by 2 percentage points. The expansion of childcare particularly affected women with two children and upper-secondary education, who are married or cohabit with their partner.

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This paper addresses homogamy and assortative mating in Switzerland. The empirical analysis monitors trends for education and hourly wages using the Swiss Labour Force Survey and the Swiss Household Panel. The analysis disentangles the effects of educational expansion from mating patterns and incorporates not only couples, but also singles. Results show an increasing level of assortative mating both for education and for wages. For wage homogamy, selection is more important than adaptation.

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Welfare opinion research has traditionally viewed migration as a potential hazard for welfare solidarity. In this article, we argue that while increased presence of foreigners can indeed make some people less supportive of public welfare provision in general or trigger opposition to migrants’ social rights, the link between migration and solidarity is not universally a negative one. Instead, many people can combine support for migration with high preferences for comprehensive social protection; others can endorse migration while they are not particularly supportive of an all-encompassing welfare state. Based on this line of reasoning we construct a taxonomy of four ideal types of welfare solidarity that are present in contemporary European welfare states. To illustrate the usefulness of this heuristic tool, we apply Latent Class Factor Analysis to European Social Survey round 8 data. We find that the majority of Europeans (56%) combine strong support for both migration and the welfare state (extended solidarity). However, exclusive solidarity is also widely spread as over a quarter of respondents (28%) oppose migration while expressing strong support for the welfare state. People who oppose migration and have relatively low preference for the welfare state (diminished solidarity) represent a small minority (5%). A little more than a tenth (11%) of Europeans endorse migration, but express relatively low support for the welfare state, which we assume to be a reflection of cosmopolitan solidarity. Despite considerable variation in the incidence of the four solidarities across countries, the preference structure is the same for all. Further, we find that at the individual level, the propensity to hold one of these types of solidarities is influenced by social trust, citizenship and country of birth, financial situation, education, and residence type. However, the extent of migration and social spending do not appear to be related with the propensity of holding either type of solidarity as the liberal’s dilemma and the welfare chauvinism theories would predict.