Abstract
Using data from the American Time Use Survey for the years 2003–2006, this paper finds that housework has a negative relation with wages for both women and men. The negative relation between housework time and wages is not likely to arise from omitted working conditions that are correlated with housework, nor from omitted effort. For women, the negative relation between housework and wages appears in most occupations, including professional and managerial occupations. The connection of housework time to the ‘lack of interest’ argument proposed by defendants in class action sex discrimination cases is examined and is not supported by the evidence.
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Notes
Studies that find a significant negative effect of housework on women’s wages include the following: Coverman (1983) uses the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey; Hersch (1985) uses data on piece rate workers; Shelton and Firestone (1989) use the 1981 Time Use Survey; Hersch (1991b), Stratton (2001) use a regional wage survey collected by Hersch; Hersch (1991a), Hersch and Stratton (1997), Hundley (2000), and Keith and Malone (2005) use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; Noonan (2001) and Hersch and Stratton (2002) use the National Survey of Families and Households; Phipps et al. (2001) use the 1995 Statistics Canada General Social Survey; Bonke et al. (2005) use the 1987 Danish Time Use Survey; Bryan and Sevilla-Sanz (2008) use the British Household Panel Survey.
Alternatively restricting the sample to those ages 21–65 and working a minimum of 10 h per week yields results virtually identical to those reported. Ninety-five percent of the sample meets these two conditions.
An appendix listing the activities grouped in each category of time use is available from the author.
Estimates including time on care for household adults and time with children on activities such as reading and playing are virtually identical to those reported.
Within the sample examined in the analyses, on average 87% of the time within a day is accounted for by time on home production, childcare, market work, personal care, leisure, and exercise.
As an alternative to log wage equations, I considered using log of weekly earnings as the dependent variable, including controls for market hours worked and market hours worked squared in addition to the other controls included in the log wage equations. The coefficients on all variables are essentially identical in both sets of analyses, so for brevity only the log wage equation results are reported.
These occupational categories and the corresponding Census 2002 4-digit occupation codes are: management, business, and financial operations (0010–0950); professional and related (1000–3540); healthcare support (3600–3650); protective service (3700–3950); food preparation and serving related (4000–4160); building and grounds cleaning and maintenance (4200–4250); personal care and service (4300–4650); sales and related (4700–4960); office and administrative support (5000–5930); natural resources, construction, and maintenance (6000–7620); production, transportation, and material moving (7700-9750).
Years of education are calculated using information on highest grade completed, highest degree attained, and years spent in a degree program. Estimates controlling for age instead of potential experience are essentially identical to those reported.
Descriptive statistics for the non-home production variables are reported in Appendix 1.
How these gender patterns arise will not be addressed here, but see Lundberg and Pollak (2007) for an overview of models of household behavior that can be used to explain gender differences in the allocation of time. See Grossbard-Shechtman (1984) for a model that demonstrates how the value of time in household production is affected by the marriage market.
The hypothesis that the daily housework coefficients are equal across all occupations can be rejected at the 1% level.
The ATUS reports separate codes for ‘socializing, relaxing, and leisure as part of job’ and for ‘eating and drinking as part of job.’ I use the expression ‘socializing as part of the job’ to refer to the sum of these two categories. Time spent with customers or clients as part of the job will be reported as a market work activity.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Shoshana Grossbard, Dan Hamermesh, Amy Nickens, and anonymous referees for helpful suggestions.
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Hersch, J. Home production and wages: evidence from the American Time Use Survey. Rev Econ Household 7, 159–178 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-009-9051-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-009-9051-z