Maids' Services as a Substitute Factor in Home-Production
Abstract
While maid's services are considered luxury goods in developed countries, that is not always the case in developing countries. Economists believe that the reason for that is the availability of cheap unskilled labor supply in developing countries. However, few attention has been given to the scarcity of durable goods used in home-production in developing countries households. The same durable goods that are considered necessity on developed countries. This paper investigates the role of women's bar- gaining power, women's shadow price of time, and family composition in deciding on expenditures in production durable goods and maid's services. The test of bargaining power indicates that the expenditure on home-production factors is an outcome of a bargaining process. Households in which the wife has higher schooling than husband, the relative probability of having maid's services is higher. The results of the di erence of husbands' and wives' education are consistent with the intrahousehold time allocation, where wives that have comparative advantage in market work are more likely to substitute market goods for home-production. Wives that do not have comparative advantage in market work specialize in home- production, demanding more time-saving durable goods. There is no evidence of parental preferences for sons or daughters. However, there is evidence that daughters' time substitutes wives's time and maid's services in home-production.Download Info
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Paper provided by Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto in its series Working Papers with number 08_10.Length:
Date of creation: Oct 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fea:wpaper:08_10
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Related research
Keywords: Intrahousehold allocation; durable goods ownership; maid's services; parental preferences;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
- J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
- J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
References
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- Patricia Cort�s & Jos� Tessada, 2011. "Low-Skilled Immigration and the Labor Supply of Highly Skilled Women," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 88-123, July.
- Browning, M. & Bourguignon, F. & Chiappori, P.A. & Lechene, V., 1992.
"Incomes and Outcomes: A structural Model of Intra-Household Allocation,"
DELTA Working Papers
92-23, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
- Browning, Martin & Francois Bourguignon & Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Valerie Lechene, 1994. "Income and Outcomes: A Structural Model of Intrahousehold Allocation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(6), pages 1067-96, December.
- Browning, M & Bourguignon, F & Chiappori, Pa & Lechene, V, 1994. "Income And Outcomes - A Structural Model Of Intrahousehold Allocation," Open Access publications from University College London http://discovery.ucl.ac.u, University College London.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Joanna Alexopoulos & Tiago V. de V. Cavalcanti, 2006.
"Cheap Home Goods And Persistent Inequality,"
Anais do XXXIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 34th Brazilian Economics Meeting]
165, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pósgraduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
- Joanna Alexopoulos & Tiago V. Cavalcanti, 2010. "Cheap home goods and persistent inequality," Economic Theory, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 417-451, December.
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