Household Time Allocation Research Articles

Empirical Estimation Results of a Collective Household Time Allocation Model

In this paper an empirical model is developed where the collective household model is used as a basic framework to describe the time allocation problem. The collective model views household behavior as the outcome of maximizing a household utility function which is a weighted sum of the utility functions of the male and the female. The empirical research that has been done is mainly focused on testing and refuting the unitary model. Moreover, in the bulk of time allocation literature the main accent still lies on the development of theory. The novelty of this paper is that we empirically estimate the two individual utility functions and the household power weight distribution, which is parameterized per household. The model is estimated on a sub-sample of the British Household Panel Survey, consisting of two-earner households. The empirical results suggest that: (1) Given that the weight distribution is wage dependent, preferences of males and females differ, which rejects the unitary model; (2) the power differences are mainly explained by differences in the ratio of the partners' hourly wages; (3) although there are significant individual variations on average the power distribution in two-earner families is about even; (4) the male tends to be marginally more productive in performing household tasks than the female; (5) the preference for total household production is influenced by family size for the female but not for the male; and (6) both males and females have a backward-bending labor supply curve.

Household time allocation – Theoretical and empirical results from Denmark

Using data from a sample of households in 1994 we find that Danish household labour allocation choices are best described by a collective model in which decisions are made cooperatively. Individual preferences are similar but there are important differences due to the differences in educational attainment. Households can be characterized as utilitarian with a sharing rule which depends on household income and is feminist rather than egalitarian. The allocation of tasks within the family depends on both the individuals’ comparative advantage in labour markets and individual preferences for paid work as well as the intra-household distribution of income. These results do not require explicit assumptions about labour supply that are often employed in the household time allocation literature. JEL-Codes: D13, J22

Representing household time allocation behavior by endogenously incorporating diverse intra-household interactions: A case study in the context of elderly couples

Travel behavior models assuming individual decision-making processes have been a dominant theme in transportation studies. While the assumption that an individual can decide on all relevant aspects of some types of travel behavior may be reasonable, in many other aspects household members interact before making decisions about different activities that they perform and the time that is involved. On the other hand, different types of households may show different group decision-making mechanisms. In other words, there might exist diverse intra-household interactions during joint decision-making processes. To reflect this point, this paper aims to develop a new household time allocation model based on the iso-elastic class of social welfare function, which can include different types of household utility functions as special cases (e.g., Nash, utilitarianism, autocratic and max–min types). Throughout this empirical analysis, which uses an activity diary data collected in a depopulated region of Japan, the effectiveness of the proposed model is confirmed. Furthermore, the model’s applicability in evaluating transportation policies for elderly people is examined based on a simulation analysis.

Household Time Allocation and Modes of Behavior: A Theory of Sorts

We develop a simple model of household time allocation decisions under strong functional form assumptions regarding preferences and household production technology. We argue that the specification is general when allowing for unrestrictive forms of population heterogeneity in the parameters characterizing these functions. Moreover, we argue that the model is not capable of distinguishing among elements of a class of behavioral rules, including Nash bargaining and Nash equilibrium, without restricting population heterogeneity in arbitrary ways. However, preferences over mates for any given set of male and female characteristics will be a function of the behavioral rules used in married households. Using data from the PSID on market hours and time spent in household production, we estimate the marginal distribution of male and female characteristics and our two alternative behavioral assumptions, and perform some formal and informal comparisons of the Nash bargaining and Nash equilibrium rules’ ability to predict the marital sorts observed in the data. Given the simplicity of the model of household behavior and marriage market equilibrium, it is perhaps not surprising that neither model provides good predictions. Overall, the evidence is slightly more supportive of the hypothesis that households behave noncooperatively.

Spousal Complementarity in Home Production

Abstract. Economists have increasingly recognized the growing role of married women in the labor market by treating the labor supply decisions of married couples as joint decisions. However, they have yet to apply the same reasoning to home production. We build a more complete model of household time allocation that consists of a system of simultaneous equations estimating hours of labor supply and home production. Using data on white couples from Wave XXV of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that working wives act as if their husbands are substitutes for home production while other wives do not. Husbands’ responses to their wives’ behavior depends upon whether children are present.

A New Look at Husbands' and Wives' Time Allocation

The impacts of economic and non‐economic factors on husbands’ and wives’ market work time and housework time are estimated using 13 years of data from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics. Several limitations in earlier studies are addressed, and a unique feature of the study is the direct estimation of effects on time allocation from changes in the prices of market‐produced goods and input goods in household production. Many of the findings of earlier studies are reconfirmed, but new insights are also explored. Husbands and wives respond similarly in their time allocations to changes in input goods prices, but their responses are different to changes in market goods prices.

Household Time Allocation Model based on Group Utility Function

Existing activity-based models typically assume an individual decision-making process. In household decision-making, however, interaction exists among household members and their activities during the allocation of the members' limited time. This paper, therefore, attempts to develop a new household time allocation model by combining group decision-making theory and time allocation theory. To do this, this paper proposes defining household utility function in the form of multi-linear utility function to represent the interactions among household members and the interactions among their activities. The effectiveness of the developed model is confirmed using activity-travel diary data. Finally, several future research issues are also mentioned.

Evidence on the Volunteer Labor Supply of Married Women

1. Introduction In this paper I investigate the volunteer labor supply of married women. There are dozens of studies that examine the labor supply of married women and a smaller number that investigate the supply of volunteer labor in general. As far as I know there are none that have focused on the supply of volunteer labor by married women. I analyze time diary data for the 1970s to consider one main question and three subsidiary questions. (i) What was the direct effect of economic variables (after-tax wage rate and other income) on married women's volunteering (both participation and hours)? (ii) Does the number of children in the family influence the volunteering of married women? To the extent that rising wages may induce smaller family size, is this an indirect channel that reduces volunteering (if one of the motivations for volunteering is to increase the quantity or quality of activities for one's own children)? The 1970s is an especially interesting time period to examine in the United States as that was the decade that saw the first large increases in married women's labor force participation rates. (iii) Are time and donations substitutes or complements for married women? (iv) Do the data support the Brown and Lankford (1992) modeling conjecture concerning a sequence of time allocation decisions as opposed to the Gronau model of household time allocation where such decisions are made simultaneously (Gronau 1986)? I find that (i) the volunteer labor supply for married women is positively sloped and inelastic with an estimated wage elasticity of +0.64. Rises in the net wage have a small negative effect on married women's participation in volunteer activities; a 25% rise in the net wage is associated with a 1% drop in the probability of volunteering. There is a small negative other income (from assets and husband's earnings) elasticity of volunteer labor supply, -0.09, so other sources of income mattered for married women's volunteering in the 1970s. The effect of other income on married women's volunteer participation is positive. (ii) Having more children increases the probability of volunteering but reduces the number of hours volunteered. (iii) Donations of time and money appear to be substitutes overall; the elasticity of married women's volunteer hours with respect to the tax price of giving is greater than two. The participation effect is again negative. (This result is tentative because the data are not based on tax return information and I lack good information on cash donations.) (iv) There is mixed support for the Brown and Lankford conjecture. The finding of a positive wage elasticity of volunteer labor supply is at odds with the opportunity cost of time interpretation of the wage, especially as the finding for other income is also negative, implying that volunteer hours are an inferior good. Substitution and income effects would, therefore, both be in a negative direction as the net wage rises. The results with the sequential specification are sensible and easily interpreted, but the key parameter estimate does not quite meet conventional standards of statistical significance. Increased hours of work decrease married women's participation and hours. An added test of the sequential model is less favorable. The wage findings suggest that rising wages for women caused a reduced incidence of volunteering among married women but, if anything, increased the hours of volunteering. One possible vehicle for this would be the entry of women into professional careers where volunteering is a normal part of the career. Another possible explanation is that married women with a loose attachment to volunteering stopped volunteering and those married women with greater attachment to volunteering increased their hours commitments to offset the participation effect. The link between children and volunteering is important as an indicator of how much selfinterest is involved in volunteering. For example, school volunteering may be a way of providing enhanced investment in one's own children where the benefit to others is a by-product. …

Gender Bias, Credit Constraints and Time Allocation in Rural India

This paper examines the impact of a child's gender on the time allocation of rural Indian households for the five‐year period subsequent to its birth. A theoretical model generates predictions for the effect of the birth of a boy relative to a girl (i.e., the gender shock) on household behaviour when the household is liquidity constrained and when it is not. The results from the empirical analysis are consistent with the case in which poorer households are liquidity constrained and less poor households are not. The interpretation of the finding that women in both groups of households work less subsequent to the birth of a boy relative to a girl differs in these two cases.

Women's Time Allocation to Child Care: Determinants and Consequences

The time women allocate to child care varies appreciably according to personal and labour market characteristics. Of particular note is the finding that better educated women spend more time in most forms of child care activities than their less well educated counterparts. This link between educational attainment and time devoted to child care is advanced as a possible justification for subsidising the education of women to a greater extent than the subsidy to men's education. It is also suggested that the stereotypes that appear to govern the household allocation of time will be difficult to break down, so that any changes in such time allocations will be slow and uncertain.

Gender Bias, Credit Constraints and Time Allocation in Rural India

This paper examines the impact of a child's gender on the time allocation of rural Indian households for the five-year period subsequent to its birth. A theoretical model generates predictions for the effect of the birth of a boy relative to a girl (i.e., the gender shock) on household behaviour when the household is liquidity constrained and when it is not. The results from the empirical analysis are consistent with the case in which poorer households are liquidity constrained and less poor households are not. The interpretation of the finding that women in both groups of households work less subsequent to the birth of a boy relative to a girl differs in these two cases.

A study of time allocation of Japanese households

In this study, we compare the patterns of time allocation of the young (age 25–39) and the elderly (age 65 or above), the employed and the unemployed, male and female Japanese households. We examine how economic rationality and the Japanese culture play their roles in determining the patterns of time allocations. Views are proposed that (1) the persisting male–female gap in the non-market domestic working hours observed in Japan is better explained by the Japanese culture than the Japanese tax system or male–female wage differential, (2) the relatively low wage-elasticity of labor supply of Japanese young males is an indication of the fact that young males enjoy considerable amount of on-the-job leisure. Further, we observe that (3) the life-cycle pattern of time allocation to sleep (and other time use for health care) is of the U-type so that the elderly invest more time on health care than the young, (4) sleeping time decreased in 1986 as compared to 1976 in Japan which might be due to the improvement of medical technology, and (5) contrary to US experience, higher wages are associated with longer hours of sleep for the Japanese young. The Appendix Aprovides a restrictive time-allocation model with special reference to time use for health care which provides theoretical support for empirical findings.

The measurement of household time allocation: Data needs, analytical approaches, and standardization

Public policy designed to improve well-being or alter social behavior has too often been ineffective because of the lack of knowledge of the nature or the trends that force people to select given time allocation patterns. In the recent past, however, there has been a growing recognition of the need to research and understand the distribution of total time to improve the ability of governments to design more effective policies. This article introduces the concept of time use measurement, reviews the development of time use research, and identifies the following key considerations for its improvement. First, a standard activity coding scheme capable of handling the nuances of time use in the more developed and developing countries and across the broad range of possible subpopulations must be developed and accepted. Second, a solid integration of objective and subjective measures into time use data collection, meeting multidisciplinary needs, must be achieved. Third, a movement toward the contextual setting of activities through episodal analysis is needed, which may mean the development of new analytical procedures and technology. Finally, it is necessary to reach a consensus on desired time-based economic, social, and psychological indicators.

Household strategies to cope with the economic costs of illness

The authors examine the strategies rural households in Burkina Faso used to cope with the costs of illness in order to avert negative effects for household production and assets. They use information from 51 qualitative interviews, a household time allocation study and a household survey. Both surveys use the same sample of n = 566 households. The authors analyze these strategies along four dimensions: the type of behavior, the sequence in which strategies employed, the level at which strategies are negotiated, i.e. the household level, the non-household extended kin level or the community level, and finally the success of strategies in protecting household production and assets. A taxonomy of 11 distinct types of coping behavior is developed which have the effect of either avoiding costs by ‘ignoring’ disease, or of minimizing the impact of costs on the household once illness is perceived. Intra-household labor substitution was the main strategy to compensate for any labor lost to illness. However, labor substitution did not eliminate production losses in the majority of households struck with severe illness of a productive member. Only wealthy household were able to fully compensate labor losses by hiring labor or by investing in equipment to enhance productivity. Sales of livestock was the main strategy to cope with the financial costs of health care. None of the households studied fell into calamity. However, the households' ability to avert the loss of production and/or assets was very varied and depended on household size, composition and assets, on the type and duration of illness and on clustering of crises (e.g. several repetitive or simultaneous illnesses or concurrent seasonal stress). Coping with the costs of illness largely occurred at the level of the household. Inter-household transfers of resources played only a small role. The authors develop the concept of risk households and suggest several policies with the potential to strengthen the ability of households to cope with the economic costs of illness.

Modelling domestic work time

What variables should be used as regressors in models of the length of time which people spend doing unpaid domestic work? To most economists, the answer would be straightforward: use the variables which are implied by a theoretical model of household time allocation (e.g. Becker's). This paper shows that this strategy has not been followed, explores why this is so, and makes some recommendations about variable specification and the treatment of paid market work time in particular. The arguments are illustrated using regressions based on UK time budget data for the mid-1980s.

The Exchange Value of Housework

Explaining persistent inequalities in the division of household labor amid secular change in women's employment patterns and in sex-role attitudes remains a challenge for sociologists and economists. The predominant conceptual solutions draw from a unifying paradigm of genderneutral exchange, and furthermore align with economic or quasi-economic images of purposive action. This article analyzes three models from this class of explanations—the human capital theory of household time allocation, the resource-bargaining perspective on marital power, and the economic dependency model—using data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. The results fail to support any of the three variations on the theme of gender neutrality in the principles governing the division of household labor. Instead, the pattern of negative findings provokes consideration of how husbands' and wives' housework behavior might serve as a vehicle of symbolic display. Evidence is presented suggesting that among couples whose earnings arrangement seriously deviates from the gender norm, housework is used symbolically to reassert one's “essential” masculinity or femininity. Overall, the results support a more expansive view of spousal exchange as a means of addressing the puzzle of why housework remains “women's work.”

Nutrient demand and the allocation of time: evidence from Guam

This paper presents an econometric study of nutrient intake in Guam which explicitly accounts for household time allocation and household capital variables. The empirical framework is based on a household production model of nutrient consumption, food expenditure, and the allocation of time between labour, leisure and food preparation activities. The study finds evidence that: (1) capital and wage variables have significant impacts on households' nutrient demands; (2) income, wage and educational status have very different effects on the nutrient choices of low-calorie households than on the nutrient choices of high-calorie households; and (3) a family's participation in the food stamp programme leads to higher levels of food expenditure but this impact is attributable to the purchase of more costly ‘taste’ characteristics in food, rather than to the purchase of more nutritious foods.

Costs of rearing children in agricultural economies: An alternative estimation approach and findings from rural Bangladesh

There are changes in child costs during demographic transition. This study examines household time allocation from 66 agricultural households in 3 villages in Tangail District in rural north central Bangladesh in 1984-85 (371 days). Component and total child-rearing costs are estimated in alternative ways. Conventional "opportunity wage" measures are considered overestimated. The methodological shortcomings of direct cost accounting procedures and consumer demand methods in computing time cost and monetary cost of child rearing are pointed out. In this study's alternative computation, age standardized equivalent costs are generated. Child food consumption costs were generated from a large national survey conducted in 1983. Nonfood expenditures were estimated by food to nonfood expenditure ratios taken from the aforementioned survey. For estimating breast-feeding costs, an estimate was produced based on the assumption that costs for infant food consumption were a fixed proportion of food costs for older children. Land ownership groups were set up to reflect socioeconomic status: 1) landless households, 2) marginal farm households with 1 acre or .4 hectares of land, 3) middle income households with 1-2 acres of land, 4) upper middle income households with 2-4 acres of land, and 5) upper income or rich households with over 4 acres of land. The nonmarket wage rate for hired household help was used to determine the value of cooking, fetching water, and household cleaning and repairing. The results confirm the low costs of child rearing in high fertility societies. Productive nonmarket activities are effective in subsidizing the costs of children. The addition of a child into households already with children has a low impact on time costs of children; "this economies of scale effect is estimated ... at 20%." The highest relative costs were found in the lowest income households, and the lowest costs were in the highest income households. 5% of total household income is devoted to child rearing in the lowest income households compared to 1% of income in the highest income households. The implications are that fertility decline is more directly related to structural changes in the economy, satisfaction of existing demand for family planning, and the producing additional demand for fertility control.

The Effects of Mechanization on the Time Allocation of Farm Households: A Case Study in Hokuriku, Japan

The Effects of Mechanization on the Time Allocation of Farm Households: A Case Study in Hokuriku, Japan

農家の時間配分と雇われ兼業時間の“外生性”

農家の時間配分と雇われ兼業時間の“外生性”