Household Production and Racial Intermarriage

  • Shoshana Grossbard
  • Jose Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal
  • Jose Alberto Molina
Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

One aspect of marital matching is whether individuals marry within their own race/ethnicity (homogamy) or intermarry. This chapter examines black/white intermarriage in light of a model based on an analysis of markets for Work-In-Household (WiHo) presented in Chaps. 2 and 3. Evidence of discrimination against blacks in such marriage markets is uncovered from an empirical analysis of American data for the years 2003-2009. It is found that white women married to black men devote 0.4 fewer hours per day to chores than their counterparts in all-white marriages, which is comparable to the effect of a child on their hours of chores. Furthermore, white men work less at housework when in couple with black women than when in all-white couples. These findings are consistent with markets for WiHo establishing lower prices of WiHo supplied by blacks than by whites. Conversely, blacks appear to do more chores if they are in couple with whites than when in all-black couples. Results are mostly for weekdays, not weekends, which is to be expected if underlying these results are differences in the price of Work-In-Household and on weekends home production is less likely to be considered as a chore. That our results are stronger for married than unmarried couples indicates that exchanges of WiHo for money are more likely to occur among married couples. Racial intermarriage differentials in hours of household work seem to be more prevalent among the U.S.-born than the foreign-born, possibly indicating less marriage market discrimination against foreign-born blacks.

References

  1. Aguiar, M., and E. Hurst. 2007. Measuring trends in leisure: The allocation of time over five decades. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122:969–1007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Altonji, J. G., and R. Blank. 1999. Race and gender in the labor market. In Handbook of labor economics, ed. O. Ashenfelter and D. Card, 3C vol, 3143–3260. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
  3. Arrow, K. J. 1998. What has economics to say about racial discrimination? Journal of Economic Perspectives 12:91–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Becker, G. S. 1957. The economics of discrimination. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  5. Becker, G. S. 1965. A theory of the allocation of time. Economic Journal 75:493–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Bergmann, B. 1971. The effects on white income of discrimination in employment. Journal of Political Economy 79:294–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Bianchi, S. M. 2000. Maternal employment and time with children: Dramatic change or surprising continuity. Demography 37:401–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Bittman, M., P. England, L. Sayer, N. Folbre, and G. Matheson. 2003. When does gender trump money? Bargaining and time in household work. American Journal of Sociology 109:186–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Blackwell, D. L., and D. T. Lichter. 2000. Mate selection among married and cohabiting couples. Journal of Family Issues 21:275–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Bloemen, H., and E. Stancanelli. 2014. Market hours, household work, child care, and wage rates of partners: An empirical analysis. Review of the Economics of the Household 12:51–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Bloemen, H., S. Pasqua, and E. Stancanelli. 2010. An empirical analysis of the time allocation of Italian couples: Are Italian men irresponsive? Review of Economics of the Household 8:345–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Bruze, G. 2011. Marriage choices of movie stars: Does spouse’s education matter? Journal of Human Capital 5:1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Burda, M., D. Hamermesh, and P. Weil. 2008. The distribution of total work in the U.S.A. and EU. In Working hours and job sharing in the EU and USA: Are Americans crazy? Are Europeans lazy? ed. T. Boeri, M. C. Burda and F. Kramarz. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  14. Burke, M. 2008. Colorism. In International encyclopedia of the social sciences, ed. W. Darity Jr., 2 vol. Detroit: Thomson Gale.Google Scholar
  15. Charles, K. K., and J. Guryan. 2008. Prejudice and wages: An empirical assessment of Becker’s the economics of discrimination. Journal of Political Economy 116:773–890.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Chiswick, B. R., and C. Houseworth. 2011. Ethnic intermarriage among immigrants: Human capital and assortative mating. Review of Economics of the Household 9:149–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Cohen, P. N. 1998. Replacing housework in the service economy. Gender and Society 12:219–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Connelly, R., and J. Kimmel. 2007. Determinants of mothers’ time choices in the United States: Caregiving, leisure, home production, and paid work. Journal of Human Resources 42:643–681.Google Scholar
  19. Connelly, R., and J. Kimmel. 2009. Spousal influences on parents’ non-market time choices. Review of Economics of the Household 7:361–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Crowder, K. D., and S. E. Tolnay. 2000. A new marriage squeeze for black women: The role of racial intermarriage by black men. Journal of Marriage and Family 62:792–807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Darity, W. A., J. Dietrich, and D. K. Guilkey. 2001. Persistent advantage or disadvantage? Evidence in support of the intergenerational drag hypothesis. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 60:435–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Foster, G., and C. Kalenkoski. 2013. Tobit or OLS? An empirical evaluation under different diary window lengths. Applied Economics 45:2994–3010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Frazis, H., and J. Stewart. 2012. How to think about time-use data: What inferences can we make about long- and short-run time use from time use diaries? Annals of Economics and Statistics 105/106:231–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Friedberg, L., and A. Webb. 2006. The chore wars: Household bargaining and leisure time. The Selected Works of Anthony Webb. http://works.bepress.com/anthony_webb/subject_areas.html.
  25. Fryer, R. G. Jr. 2007. Guess who’s coming to dinner? Trends in interracial marriages over the 20th century. Journal of Economic Perspectives 21 (1): 71–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Gershuny, J. 2012. Too many zeros: A method for estimating long-term time-use from short diaries. Annals of Economics and Statistics 105/106:247–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Gershuny, J. I., and J. P. Robinson. 1988. Historical changes in the household division of labor. Demography 25:537–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Goldsmith, A., D. Hamilton, and W. Darity Jr. 2007. From dark to light: Skin color and wages among African Americans. Journal of Human Resources 42:701–738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Grossbard-Shechtman, Amyra. 1984. A theory of allocation of time in markets for labor and marriage. Economic Journal 94:863–882.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Grossbard-Shechtman, Shoshana. 1993. On the economics of marriage. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
  31. Grossbard-Shechtman, S. A., and X. Fu. 2002. Women’s labor force participation and status exchange in intermarriage: An empirical study in Hawaii. Journal of Bioeconomics 4 (3): 241–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Grossbard-Shechtman, A. S., and S. Neuman. 1988. Women’s labor supply and marital choice. Journal of Political Economy 96:1294–1302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Hamermesh, Dan. 1990. Shirking or productive schmoozing: Wages and the allocation of time at work. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 43:121S–133S.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Hamermesh, Dan. 2002. Timing, togetherness and time windfalls. Journal of Population Economics 15:601–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Hamermesh, Dan. 2007. Time to eat: Household production under increasing income inequality. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 89:852–863.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Hamermesh, D., H. Frazis, and J. Stewart. 2005. Data watch: The American time use survey. Journal of Economic Perspectives 19:221–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Hamilton, D., A. Goldsmith, and W. A. Darity Jr. 2009. Shedding ‘light’ on marriage: The influence of skin shade on marriage of black females. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 72:30–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Hersch, Joni. 2009. Home production and wages: Evidence from the American time use survey. Review of Economics of the Household 7:159–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Hersch, J., and L. S. Stratton. 2002. Housework and wages. Journal of Human Resources 37:217–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Hitsch, G. J., A. Hortaçsu, and D. Ariely. 2010. What makes you click?—Mate preferences and matching outcomes in online dating. Quantitative Marketing and Economics 8:393–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Jenkins, S. P., and L. Osberg. 2005. Nobody to play with? The implications of leisure coordination. In The economics of time use, ed. D. S. Hamermesh and G. A. Pfann, Chap. 5, 113–145. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
  42. John, D., and B. A. Shelton. 1997. The production of gender among black and white women and men: The case of household labor. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 36:171–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Juster, F. T., and F. P. Stafford. 1985. Time, goods, and well-being. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research.Google Scholar
  44. Kahneman, D., and A. B. Krueger. 2006. Developments in the measurement of subjective well-being. Journal of Economic Perspectives 20:3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  45. Kahneman, D., A. B. Krueger, D. Schkade, N. Schwarz, and A. Stone. 2004. A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: The day reconstruction method. Science 306:1776–1780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. Kalenkoski, C., D. Ribar, and L. S. Stratton. 2005. Parental child care in single-parent, cohabiting, and married couples families: Time-diary evidence from the United Kingdom. American Economic Review 95:194–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. Kalenkoski, C., D. Ribar, and L. S. Stratton. 2007. The effect of family structure on parents’ child care time in the United States and the United Kingdom. Review of Economics of the Household 5:353–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  48. Kalmijn, Matthijs. 1993. Trends in black/white intermarriage. Social Forces 72:119–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. Lafortune, J., P.-A. Chiappori, M. Iyigun, and Y. Weiss. 2012. Changing the rules midway: The impact of granting alimony rights on existing and newly-formed partnerships. Working Paper 424, Instituto de Economia, Universidad Catolica de Chile (March).Google Scholar
  50. Meng, X., and R. G. Gregory. 2005. Intermarriage and the economic assimilation of immigrants. Journal of Labor Economics 23:135–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  51. Meng, X., and D. Meurs. 2009. Intermarriage, language, and economic assimilation process: A case study of France. International Journal of Manpower 30:127–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  52. Nottmeyer, O. 2011. Couple’s relative labor supply in intermarriage. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5567, March.Google Scholar
  53. Reid, Margaret. 1934. The economics of household production. London: Wiley.Google Scholar
  54. Robinson, J. P., and G. Godbey. 1997. Time for life: The surprising ways Americans use their time. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press.Google Scholar
  55. Sandberg, J. F., and S. L. Hofferth. 2001. Changes in children’s time with parents: United States, 1981–1997. Demography 38:423–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  56. Sayer, L. C., and L. Fine. 2011. Racial-ethnic differences in US married women’s and men’s housework. Social Indicators Research 101:259–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  57. Semyonov, M., D. R. Hoyt, and R. I. Scott. 1984. Place, race and differential occupational opportunities. Demography 21:259–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  58. Sevilla-Sanz, A., J. I. Gimenez-Nadal, and C. Fernandez. 2010. Gender roles and the division of unpaid work in Spanish households. Feminist Economics 16 (4): 137–184CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  59. Sevilla-Sanz, A., J. I. Gimenez-Nadal, and J. Gershuny. 2012. Leisure inequality in the United States: 1965–2003. Demography 49:939–964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  60. Smith, J. P., and F. R. Welch. 1989. Black economic progress after Myrdal. Journal of Economic Literature 27:519–564.Google Scholar
  61. Spanier, G. B., and P. C. Glick. 1980. Mate selection differentials between whites and blacks in the United States. Social Forces 58:707–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  62. Stancanelli, E., and L. Stratton. 2014. Her time, his time, or the maid’s time: An analysis of the demand for domestic housework. Economica. 81:445–467.Google Scholar
  63. Tobin, James. 1958. Estimation of relationships for limited dependent variables. Econometrica 26:24–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  64. Wright, R., M. Ellis, and S. Holloway. 2013. Gender and the neighborhood location of mixed-race couples. Demography 50:393–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Shoshana Grossbard
    • 1
  • Jose Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal
    • 1
  • Jose Alberto Molina
    • 1
  1. 1.San Diego State University and IZASan DiegoUSA

Personalised recommendations