A model of weekly labor participation for a Belgian synthetic population

          Cinzia Cirillo, Eric Cornelis and Philippe L. Toint

                           Report naXys-09-2011

This paper presents a model of labor participation calibrated on a weekly
basis; part-time and full-time employments are also considered. By applying
the theory of random utility maximization we model households’ choices. In
order to have a good temporal and spatial coverage the model is calibrated on
three datasets, extracted from both national and regional travel surveys. The
results are applied to synthetic households that reproduce the Belgian
population. The proposed innovative methodology simulates synthetic agents by
accounting both for households’ and individuals’ characteristics, while not
suffering from the problem of the "zero cell value". The results indicate
that there is major day-to-day variability in working activity participation;
in particular, on Wednesdays and Fridays the number of households working
part-time or not working is particularly high. This is consistent with what
was expected by the analysts. Working participation is a fundamental component
in activity based models where work is considered a skeletal activity. The
tools developed here can be useful to study how changes in population
characteristics (i.e. increases of flexible working arrangements and of the
number of women in the work force) affect activity participation and travel
patterns.