Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work

Elena Stancanelli and Leslie Stratton

No 5253, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper analyzes households' demand for time inputs to domestic services, modeling simultaneously the decision to purchase services in the market and the time spent on weekend and weekday days by each partner on routine household chores. By focusing on cleaning, laundry, and ironing, we reduce the likelihood that preferences matter and increase the overlap with market services. Particular emphasis is placed on estimating the effects of prices, as captured by own and partner wages and the market price for domestic services. We exploit time-diary data for Great Britain and France, relying on cross-country comparisons to generalize our findings. The results indicate that prices strongly influence market purchases, and that maid service is a closer substitute for household time on weekends than weekdays, but is also correlated with 'her' weekday time. More generally, we find that women's wages have a stronger association with the inputs to domestic work than any other price measure.

Keywords: time use; domestic work; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2010-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published as 'Maids, Appliances and Couples' Housework: The Demand for Inputs to Domestic Production' in: Economica, 2014, 81 (323), 445-467

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5253.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work (2014)
Working Paper: Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work (2014)
Working Paper: Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5253

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().