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We studied the association between reference group with respect to material deprivation and subjective economic well-being. We did not find evidence of a positive association.

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In what Presser (2003) calls the '24/7 economy', the demand for services outside of the traditional 40-hour workweek is becoming more common, and so an increasing number of workers are being staffed to meet this demand. The result has been a steady rise over the past 20 years in the share of the labour force that must earn their wages in nonstandard hours, which cut into, and in many cases monopolize, the hours that were once reserved for family life. There is a wide body of research from the US supporting the presence of negative marital outcomes for workers in these schedules, which include a higher risk of divorce, decreased marital satisfaction, and decreased time together as a couple. While research into these effects has lagged in the European context, findings from The Netherlands indicate that the negative impacts of nonstandard schedules may not be universal, and instead may depend on country-specific institutional factors. This project aimed to build on the research done in the Netherlands by (a) investigating further whether the negative impacts of nonstandard work schedules exist for married couples in Europe; (b) by identifying whether these effects vary by country context, gender, and the job timing of one's spouse. Utilizing BHPS and GSOEP data from 1995 to 2009, we compared the risk of marital dissolution for workers in standard and nonstandard schedules in the UK and Germany. We observed that in both countries, workers in regular night and/or evening schedules had significantly higher odds of experiencing marital dissolution than workers in day schedules. The picture was slightly less clear for those in varying schedules, as the effect was only significant in Germany. While we saw that the effects of nonstandard schedules did vary by country context and gender, we found no significant interaction effects. We did, however, find strong evidence that the destabilizing potential of a nonstandard work schedule is affected by the work timing of one's spouse. Overall, our results indicate that workers in nonstandard schedules in Germany and the UK are at an increased risk of negative marital outcomes. We hope that this research highlights the need for greater attention to be paid to the social consequences of changing work schedules in Europe by policy makers and researchers.

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The literature on marital relations that focuses on the impact of household income on the odds of divorce, generally points out to a negative effect, suggesting that the odds of divorce decrease with household income. However, little is known about its effect when embedded in the context of an economic crisis. The scarce evidence that exist about this relationship is inconclusive, pointing to either a negative or a positive effect of household income on divorce. In light of the recent and ongoing economic crisis in Europe, this paper contributes to the literature on the economic determinants of divorce, by examining the effect of household income on the odds of divorce occurrence, before and after the onset of the European economic crisis, in early 2010. This relation is examined using data from EU-SILC, for the period 2003-2013 and for the countries that were hit the most by the European economic crisis, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. Using logistic regression to examine the relationship of interest, we came to conclusions that contradict previous studies. Our results suggest that the effect of household income on divorce is specifically mediated by other factors, such as the educational level of the partners, the employment status of women and home ownership. In addition, the results show that the effect of household income on divorce occurrence does not differ before and after the advent of the economic crisis.