Study finds higher-earning men would take a pay cut to spend more time with partners
Most men in Europe want to spend fewer hours at work and more time with their families even though it would cut their income, a major study on employment published in the journal Sociology shows.
The common belief that higher-earning men like to work longer to build their careers is shown to be wrong by the study – men who earn the majority of their household’s income were most likely to want to work less.
Sociologists Dr Shireen Kanji (pictured) from our School of Management and Dr Robin Samuel of the University of Bern also found that for men breadwinners the attraction of spending more time with their partner is as strong a pull as children’s company.
The researchers analysed survey data on the working lives of more than 4,000 men in 12 European countries, including the UK.