Abstract
BackgroundResearch on the effects of marriage on health maintains that there is a gender-specific gradient, with men deriving far greater benefits than women. One reason provided for this difference is the disproportionate amount of time spent by women on housework and childcare. However, this hypothesis has yet to be explicitly tested for these role-related time use activities. This study provides empirical evidence on the association between role-related time use activities (i.e. housework, childcare and paid work) and self-reported health among married men and women.MethodsData from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS) on 32,881 men and 26,915 women from Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US were analyzed. Seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models and multivariable logistic regression were used to estimate the association between role-related time use activities and self-reported health among married men and women.ResultsThe findings showed that education, occupation and number of children under 18 years old in the household were the most consistent predictors of time allocation among married men and women. Significant gender differences were also found in time allocation, with women sacrificing paid working time or reducing time devoted to housework for childcare. Men, in contrast, were less likely to reduce paid working hours to increase time spent on childcare, but instead reduced time allocation to housework. Allocating more time to paid work and childcare was associated with good health, whereas time spent on housework was associated with poor health, especially among women.ConclusionsTime allocation to role-related activities have differential associations on health, and the effects vary by gender and across countries. To reduce the gender health gap among married men and women, public policies need to take social and gender roles into account.
Highlights
Research on the effects of marriage on health maintains that there is a gender-specific gradient, with men deriving far greater benefits than women
We investigated the impact of time allocated to paid market work, unpaid housework, and childcare on self-reported health, and examined whether the effects vary by gender and across countries
Our results suggest that the implementation of institutional policies that allow for better work-life balance might lead to a reduction in the trade-offs that women have to make between paid work, unpaid household work and childcare
Summary
Research on the effects of marriage on health maintains that there is a gender-specific gradient, with men deriving far greater benefits than women. One reason provided for this difference is the disproportionate amount of time spent by women on housework and childcare. This hypothesis has yet to be explicitly tested for these role-related time use activities. This study provides empirical evidence on the association between role-related time use activities (i.e. housework, childcare and paid work) and self-reported health among married men and women. There is some evidence that the protective effects of marriage are unequally distributed [5,6,7,8], with married men generally deriving greater health benefits compared to married women [2, 3, 9, 10]. Prior studies have shown that time pressure is negatively associated with health, and that women are more often exposed to conditions exacerbating these associations [3, 10, 11, 15]
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