The Allocation of Time of Israeli Women

Abstract

The wife's time is like an iceberg: we have plenty of information about the visible tip, the time she spends in the market, but almost none about the submerged part spent at home. The last few decades have witnessed in the Western world a major change in the relative importance of the two parts, with more and more women joining the labor force. This change has implications far beyond the immediate effect on the labor market, affecting marriage and divorce patterns, fertility, and education of children (to name just a few). Not surprisingly, economists have made a large effort to explain the market behavior of married women, that is, their patterns of participation, the number of hours worked, the determinants of wives' earnings, their occupational choice, and the male-female wage differential. However, very little has been done to analyze the reallocation of time within the home sector, a reallocation which may have an impact on the well-being of the family that is not less important than the change in the woman's working habits.' There exist only scanty data on the changes taking place within the household over time. In the absence of such time-series data, it is useful to examine the cross-section evidence and analyze the factors determining the family's allocation of time at a given point of time.