Do you have time to take a walk together? Private and joint time within the household

Abstract

We develop a theoretical model for the intra-household allocation of time and consumption. The model distinguishes between the partners' joint and private leisure time. We estimate the parameters of our model on a Danish time use survey with information on time allocation and expenditures. The empirical estimation leads to four main conclusions. First, we find that assignable expenditures vary with female and male wage rates, consistent with the collective model, and we can assign this variation to the Pareto weight being sensitive to relative wages. Second, we find that men put more weight on both their own private expenditure and composite leisure than women. Third, we find that joint leisure and individual leisure are not perfect substitutes for partners. Fourth, we observe that both joint and private leisure are independent of the wage distribution. Thus, togetherness is not a substitute for economic factors. Fifth, we find that when the female wage goes up, all else equal, her child care hours increase, while her husband's child care hours decrease.