2.2.1. Individual characteristics
Obvious individual characteristics are gender (dummy for women), ethnicity (dummy for native Belgian)2 and age.
Educational level (introduced by three dummies, the reference category being higher secondary education) is included as an
explanatory variable because higher educated workers are assumed to have better labor market alternatives and thus higher
turnover intentions (Sousa-Poza and Henneberger, 2004). The data also provided information about the family situation
(e.g. dependents) but these variables were not significant and left out of the presented results in Section 3.