I’m hot on this now because I’m working on a project on the Capability Approach and trying to collect (theoretically uncorrupted) intuitions about the value of effective freedom as such—of having lots of options that one does not exercise. Intuitions vary widely. I am an option hog, not only risk-averse to the highest degree but modally risk-averse: I would pay heavily to be insured against bad things that I knew will never happen to me and to have options I know I will never take. I have a taste for mere possibilities.

Even if most people aren’t as modally risk-averse as I am my informal surveys suggest that they are prepared to pay, though not as much as I would, for options that they themselves won’t take, and even buy insurance for others. That’s the core of the moral point of view, isn’t it? “I won’t ever need or want to go part-time, I won’t ever be stuck working at a lousy job, I won’t ever be poor. But there are lots of people who need or want the option of part-time work, opportunities to avoid being stuck at lousy work, ways out of poverty so it COULD have been me.”

The public subsidizes a system of higher education with a lot of expensive flexibility built in that doesn’t only insure people against changes of circumstance but against changes of heart. Even taking into account the state interest in producing more people with job skills I think this system is still more expensive than one in which at 18 you decide irrevocably whether or not to go to college and what field to study and what career path to pursue if you go to (a state subsidized) college. The public however is prepared to pay for that insurance policy for themselves and their kids—for more flexibility and more options, even if we ourselves don’t take advantage of them. We don’t say you made your career decision at 18—if you decide to change your mind now because your tastes or values have changed you have to pay for it yourself at out of state rates or at a private college.

There’s a principle here that goes beyond the part-time work issue: does the political community want a high-risk pay-as-you-go system or does it want to kick in a little for an insurance scheme that provides more flexibility and more viable options. I’ve never worked part-time, never wanted to work part-time even when my kids were little, and doubt that I ever will want or need to work part-time, but I’m perfectly happy to pay for the “indirect benefit” of that possibility. IMHO people benefit from mere possibilities and more practically, my circumstances or tastes could change. And that’s just from the purely egoistic point of view.

Ancient Rome, at least according to the story my mother told, had a privately-owned pay-as-you-go fire department run by Crassus who got rich by making confiscatory deals with citizens whose houses were burning down. It’s probably a false etymology but I’d like to think that that’s where our word “crass” comes from.

The argument appears to me to beg two questions. First, why should the size of the costs associated with part time work have any role at all in determining how those costs are spread? Whatever the size, shouldn’t they be borne primarily by the same group of people that primarily benefits from part time work (i.e. part time workers)? And second, if we assume that the costs associated with part time work are small, why does that support shifting those costs onto the political community as a whole? Why impose them on a community that includes many full time workers who benefit from the possibility of part time work indirectly at best?

(Moderately) reducing hours to let’s say 30-35 I suspect will have quite little impact on sustained weekly-based productivity, based on my empirical observations how much (or rather little) work actually gets done in high-pressure office environments where 45+ hours is the de facto baseline.

How much workers, part-time or full-time, are worth per hour is an empirical question and looking at the case I know—adjuncts at my place—it’s pretty clear that the magnitude of the difference in wages per hour and benefits between adjuncts and me, a tenured full professor is way out of whack with differences in productivity. I’d bet that this goes out in the Real World too.

Oh, but comparing the “social” cost of an expensively-trained (sunk cost) doctor working part-time or not working at all, and that’s quite often the choice available, it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?

My guess is that this cost difference is not very high – and if that’s the case than I would consider it a price that a political community should be prepared to pay for the higher quality of life of the citizens, and especially children, and the positive effects of part-time workers on the community (I am almost sure that they are contributing more with their voluntary work to the community than full-time workers, in this country at least).

If the average (social) cost difference of a part-time woker would be very high (as can be the case for part-time working medical doctors whose expensive studies have been heavily subsidised by the taxpayers, as is the case in many EU countries), then I am less sure. Perhaps the costs should be shared? I have no firm views on this and am happy to be persuaded either way.