Market Work, Housework and Childcare: A Time Use Approach

Emanuela Cardia (emanuela.cardia@umontreal.ca) and Paul Gomme

No 15007, Working Papers from Concordia University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Raising children takes considerable time, particularly for women. Yet, the role of childcare time has received scant attention in the macroeconomics literature. We develop a life-cycle model in which the time dimension of childcare plays a central role. An important contribution of the paper is estimation of the parameters of a childcare production function using data on primary and secondary childcare time as reported in the American Time Use Survey (2003--2015). The model does a better job matching the observed life-cycle patterns of womens' time use than a model without childcare. Our counterfactual experiments show that the increase in the relative wage of women since the 1960s is an important factor in the increase in womens' work time; changes in fertility associated with the baby boom play a smaller role, and changes in the price of durables are found to have a negligible effect. We consider the effects of cheaper daycare. Not surprisingly, this experiment leads to greater use of daycare and more time allocated to market work. A knock-on effect of cheaper daycare is a substantial decline in primary childcare time.

Keywords: Household Technology; Childcare; Women Labor Force Participation; Home Production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 E24 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-lab and nep-mac
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http://paulgomme.github.io/childcare-time-use-2017-12.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Market Work, Housework and Childcare: A Time Use Approach (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crd:wpaper:15007

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