Home hours in the United States and Europe

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: Using data from the Multinational Time Use Study, this paper documents the trends and levels of time allocation, with a focus on home hours, for a relatively large set of industrialized countries during the past 50 years. Three patterns emerge. First, home hours have decreased in both the United States and European countries. Second, female time allocation contributes more to the cross-country difference in both the trends and the levels of market hours and home hours per person. Third, time allocations between the United States and Europe are more similar for the prime-age group than for the young and old groups. Terms of use: Documents inJEL classification: J22, D13

Unbalanced Unpaid Work: Women’s Household Work and the Persistence of the Gender Pay Gap

“…Overall, the increase in unpaid work associated with a change in household characteristics is much larger for women than it is for men. This fnding is consistent with other studies that fnd that the amount of time women spend on unpaid work is more responsive to changes in household structure than men's (Blau and Kahn, 2017;Fang and McDaniel, 2017). While men take on some additional unpaid work as the amount of work required for the household to function increases, they take on comparatively less work than women.…”

“…Over the last 50 years, the amount of time spent on unpaid work has generally decreased while the amount of time spent on leisure has increased. While technological improvements contribute to the decrease in hours of unpaid work, women's increased labor force participation has also decreased the time spend they spend on unpaid work (Fang and McDaniel, 2017). The increase in men's time spent on unpaid work is likely tied to both changing attitudes toward unpaid work and increased responsibilities for men when women are more likely to work outside the home.…”

Der Gesamtbetrag der Arbeit in den Arbeitsmarktstatistiken

“…The difference persists also after age 55. However, it depends on high employment intensity of both men and women in the US, but on very high OUP intensity of women of aged 55 years or more in Italy (similar evidence in also found by Fang et al 2014).…”

Female market work, tax regimes, and the rise of the service sector

“…These discrepancies are due to the fixed elasticities of substitution between hours of men and women in the market, home and leisure, along with the fully flexible choice on the intensive margin on market hours. McDaniel, 2017;Schirle, 2008), however there is no consistent estimate for the elasticity. 19 The Frisch elasticity is the elasticity of labor supply with respect to wages, keeping the marginal utility of consumption constant, ℓ t h t 1 σ , (Olovsson, 2009).…”

“…Duernecker and Herrendorf (2015) show that differences between the US and France stem from a rise in leisure time. This literature models the household as a single representative agent facing different tax levels, while Fang and McDaniel (2017) find that market work and home production vary, to a large extent, when disaggregated by sex. Olivetti and Petrongolo (2014) further show that countries with smaller service sectors have less female employment.…”