Work-Family Policy and Negative Work-Family Spillover in Ten Countries

Leah Ruppanner, University of California, Irvine
Joy Pixley, University of California, Irvine

This paper addresses the relationship between a country’s family-friendly policies and individual negative work-family spillover. Coupling the Gornick, Meyers and Ross (1997) family-policy cluster typology for ten nations with individual-level data from the 2002 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), we analyze the extent to which countries with more supportive policy regimes produce lower spillover between work and family for men and women. Using a hierarchical model to simultaneously address country- and individual-level effects, we find men in moderate policy environments report less spillover than men in weak policy environments. Women in moderate family-friendly policy environments report the least spillover, women in weak report the most, and women in strong environments fall in between these two. We find three significant interaction effects explain the gender difference in spillover: women who work more, women who are divorced and women who are dissatisfied with their home lives, report greater spillover.