The role of educational attainment in production and transfers in the form of unpaid household work

Abstract

The paper analyses the role of educational level in unpaid household work by breaking down the age profiles of production and transfers by three educational levels: low, medium, and high. The age profiles of the production and transfers of unpaid household work are presented for eight EU countries: Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain. Results show that time spent on housework peaks around the retirement age. At this point, individuals retire and have more time available for housework. However, the educational level does not have a large impact on men’s housework production levels, but it has it on the levels of women’s housework production. The results further show that highly educated women tend to spend the least time on housework production over the life cycle. On the other hand, men and women with high levels of education spend the most time on childcare, while both men and women with low levels of education spend the least on it: about two and a half times less time than the highly educated. Women are still the main providers of childcare and also the main transfer givers of unpaid household work over the life cycle. On the other hand, men of all educational levels are transfer recipients for most of the life cycle. However, highly educated men give highest transfers during their working ages in most of the countries analysed, while highly educated women transfer slightly less of unpaid household work than women of other educational levels.