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Time to Eat: Household Production Under Increasing Income Inequality

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Author Info
Daniel S. Hamermesh

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Abstract

Eating requires the raw food materials that make up meals and also the time devoted to buying food, preparing meals and eating them, and cleaning up afterwards. Using time-diary and expenditure data for the United States for 1985 and 2003, I examine how income and time prices affect both time and goods input into this household-produced commodity. By focusing on these two years, between which income and earnings inequality increased, I analyze how household production is affected by changing economic opportunities. The results demonstrate that inputs into eating increase with income, and higher time prices at a given level of income reduce time inputs. Over this period the relative goods intensity of producing this commodity increased, especially at the lower part of the income distribution, and the average time input dropped substantially. The results are consistent with goods-time substitution being relatively difficult for eating and with substitution becoming relatively more difficult as production expands.

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Paper provided by Levy Economics Institute, The in its series Economics Working Paper Archive with number wp_434.

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Date of creation: Jan 2006
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Handle: RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_434

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  1. Papers and articles using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS)
References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Robert A. Pollak, 2005. "Bargaining Power in Marriage: Earnings, Wage Rates and Household Production," NBER Working Papers 11239, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Heckman, James J, 1979. "Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 153-61, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Melissa S. Kearney, 2005. "Rising Wage Inequality: The Role of Composition and Prices," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2096, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
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  4. S'bastien Lecocq, 2001. "The allocation of time and goods in household activities: A test of separability," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 585-597. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Attanasio, Orazio P & Weber, Guglielmo, 1995. "Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1121-57, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Biddle, Jeff E & Zarkin, Gary A, 1989. "Choice among Wage-Hours Packages: An Empirical Investigation of Male Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 7(4), pages 415-37, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Peter Gottschalk & Susan E. Mayer, 1997. "Changes in Home Production and Trends in Economic Inequality," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 382, Boston College Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  8. Thomas F. Crossley & Yuqian Lu, 2004. "Exploring the Returns-to-Scale in Food Preparation," Department of Economics Working Papers 2004-06, McMaster University. [Downloadable!]
  9. Gottschalk, Peter & Smeeding, Timothy M., 2000. "Empirical evidence on income inequality in industrialized countries," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 261-307 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Krueger, 1990. "The Effect of Age at School Entry on Educational Attainment: An Application of Instrumental Variables with Moments from Two Samples," NBER Working Papers 3571, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1984. "Consumption during Retirement: The Missing Link in the Life Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(1), pages 1-7, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Biddle, Jeff E & Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1990. "Sleep and the Allocation of Time," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 922-43, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Slesnick, Daniel T, 1993. "Gaining Ground: Poverty in the Postwar United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 1-38, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Michael Burda & Daniel S. Hamermesh & Philippe Weil, 2007. "Total Work, Gender and Social Norms," IZA Discussion Papers 2705, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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  3. Rachel Connelly & Jean Kimmel, 2007. "Spousal Influences on Parents’ Non-Market Time Choices," IZA Discussion Papers 2894, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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