Essays on the Well-Being and Time Use of Households and their Members

This PhD dissertation aims at broadening the knowledge on household economics and their behavior. More precisely, it focuses on the well-being of household’s members, and its determinants, with, among others, an emphasis on the individuals’ time allocations. This analysis is performed in several steps as different ways of measuring well-being and of considering households are allowed for. Concerning households, it goes from considering them as a single entity to modeling them as a collection of individuals trying to take into account the potential interdependencies between these individuals. As for the measure of well-being, it starts by simply looking at the consumption of the households, then at the self-declared well-being of their members (what is called subjective well-being in the literature), to finally indirectly consider the well-being of the children in the households. The first chapter of this thesis therefore investigates on the effect of households’ indebtedness on their consumption. The second chapter, analyses the relationship between time allocations of household’s members and their subjective well-being (SWB). Finally, the third chapter tries to look at the impact that parents’ and grandparents’ level of education has on the investments that the children in the households receive, both in terms of time and money.