IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6436.html

The Role of Preferences and Opportunity Costs in Determining the Time Allocated to Housework

Author

Listed:
  • Stratton, Leslie S.

    (Virginia Commonwealth University)

Abstract

The time devoted to housework in couple households is substantial. Research on intrahousehold time allocations has generally assumed that housework is a necessary evil and that the partner with the lower opportunity cost of time in the market will devote more time to home production. In reality, households/individuals are likely motivated to maximize happiness, and preferences regarding even mundane household chores differ considerably. We use information on preferences, opportunity costs, and time use from the 2000-2001 United Kingdom Time Use Survey to examine the time partners spend doing laundry, ironing, cleaning, and food shopping. While compared with other household chores such as gardening and do-it-yourself repairs, the selected activities are generally less enjoyable, preferences do vary across the population and are correlated with reported time use. Joint multivariate analysis of his and her time on weekend and weekday days as well as maid service reveals that her opportunity cost of time matters substantially more than his, but that his preferences play a greater role than hers.

Suggested Citation

  • Stratton, Leslie S., 2012. "The Role of Preferences and Opportunity Costs in Determining the Time Allocated to Housework," IZA Discussion Papers 6436, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6436
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6436.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hamermesh, Daniel S., 2007. "AJAE Appendix: Time to Eat: Household Production Under Increasing Income Inequality," American Journal of Agricultural Economics APPENDICES, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(4), pages 1-8, November.
    2. Hersch, Joni & Stratton, Leslie S, 1994. "Housework, Wages, and the Division of Housework Time for Employed Spouses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 120-125, May.
    3. Richard Blundell & Pierre-André Chiappori & Costas Meghir, 2005. "Collective Labor Supply with Children," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(6), pages 1277-1306, December.
    4. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2005. "Consumption versus Expenditure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 919-948, October.
    5. Marcel Kerkhofs & Peter Kooreman, 2003. "Identification and estimation of a class of household production models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(3), pages 337-369.
    6. Robert A. Pollak, 2012. "Allocating Time: Individuals' Technologies, Household Technology, Perfect Substitutes, and Specialization," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 105-106, pages 75-97.
    7. Sanjiv Gupta & Michael Ash, 2008. "Whose money, whose time? A nonparametric approach to modeling time spent on housework in the United States," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 93-120.
    8. Mette Gortz, 2011. "Home production – Enjoying the process or the product?," electronic International Journal of Time Use Research, Research Institute on Professions (Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB)) and The International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR), vol. 8(1), pages 85-109, November.
    9. David Roodman, 2009. "Estimating Fully Observed Recursive Mixed-Process Models with cmp," Working Papers 168, Center for Global Development.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stancanelli, Elena G. F. & Stratton, Leslie S., 2010. "Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work," IZA Discussion Papers 5253, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Sam Cosaert & Veerle Hennebel, 2023. "Parental Childcare with Process Benefits," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(357), pages 339-371, January.
    3. Antonella Caiumi & Federico Perali, 2015. "Who bears the full cost of children? Evidence from a collective demand system," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 33-64, August.
    4. Elena Stancanelli & Arthur Van Soest, 2012. "Retirement and Home Production: A Regression Discontinuity Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 600-605, May.
    5. Menta, Giorgia & Lepinteur, Anthony, 2021. "Boys don’t cry (or do the dishes): Family size and the housework gender gap," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 164-188.
    6. Short, Gianna & Peterson, Hikaru, 2016. "Does time spent preparing food affect consumers’ food choices?," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 244990, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    7. Martina Kirchberger, 2014. "Preferences over Leisure and Consumption of Siblings and Intra-Household Allocation," Economics Series Working Papers 713, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Xiang, Di & Zhan, Lue & Bordignon, Massimo, 2020. "A reconsideration of the sugar sweetened beverage tax in a household production model," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    9. Massimo Bordignon & Di Xiang & Lue Zhan, 2018. "Predicting the Effects of a Sugar Sweetened Beverage Tax in a Household Production Model," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def075, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    10. George Davis, 2014. "Food at home production and consumption: implications for nutrition quality and policy," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 565-588, September.
    11. Miki Kohara & Yusuke Kamiya, 2016. "Maternal employment and food produced at home: evidence from Japanese data," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 417-442, June.
    12. Jim Been & Eduard Suari‐Andreu & Marike Knoef & Rob Alessie, 2024. "Consumption and time use responses to unemployment: Implications for the lifecycle model," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(361), pages 1-32, January.
    13. Gigi Foster & Leslie S. Stratton, 2018. "Do significant labor market events change who does the chores? Paid work, housework, and power in mixed-gender Australian households," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(2), pages 483-519, April.
    14. Sam Allgood, 2009. "The Collective Household, Household Production and Efficiency of Marginal Reforms," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(5), pages 749-771, October.
    15. Ponczek, Vladimir & Grezzana, Stefânia, 2012. "Gender Bias at the Brazilian Superior Labor Court," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 32(1), March.
    16. Procher, Vivien & Ritter, Nolan & Vance, Colin, 2014. "Making Dough or Baking Dough? Spousal Housework Responsibilities in Germany, 1992-2011," Ruhr Economic Papers 472, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    17. Gigi Foster & Leslie Stratton, 2017. "Do Significant Labour Market Events Change Who Does the Laundry? Work, chore allocation, and power in Australian households," Discussion Papers 2017-06, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    18. Rachel Connelly & Jean Kimmel, 2009. "Spousal influences on parents’ non-market time choices," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 361-394, December.
    19. Athary Janiso & Prakash Kumar Shukla & Bheemeshwar Reddy A, 2024. "What explains the gender gap in unpaid housework and care work in India?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 42(1), January.
    20. Bonsang, Eric & van Soest, Arthur, 2015. "Home Production and Retirement in Couples: A Panel Data Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 9156, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6436. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.