The Division of Labour Within the Household and Life Satisfaction

Anna Gudrun Ragnarsdottir (), Paul McNamee (), Edward Norton, Thorhildur Olafsdottir () and Tinna Laufey Asgeirsdottir ()
Additional contact information
Anna Gudrun Ragnarsdottir: University of Iceland
Paul McNamee: University of Aberdeen
Thorhildur Olafsdottir: University of Iceland
Tinna Laufey Asgeirsdottir: University of Iceland

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2024, vol. 25, issue 6, No 19, 22 pages

Abstract: Abstract Historically, the division of labour within the household has been characterized by women allocating more time to domestic labour and men allocating more time to market labour. Although pressure for gender equality in both domestic and market labour is rising, it is unclear how the division of labour within the household relates to life satisfaction. Using panel data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (2002–2021) and couple-fixed effects models we estimate, by gender, the relationship between own and partner’s time spent on various household responsibilities and life satisfaction using three different measures of time use for four household responsibilities. Household responsibilities are divided into routine chores, taking care of own children, outdoor tasks, and paid work. Our main findings include that household responsibilities that significantly relate to life satisfaction differ by gender. However, outdoor tasks (maintenance and gardening) positively relate to the life satisfaction of both men and women. We further find that women’s life satisfaction is more sensitive to comparisons to others, both within and outside the home, than men’s life satisfaction. The results also suggest that men experience increased life satisfaction if they spend more time on household responsibilities traditionally performed by women and less time on paid work. Conversely, women's life satisfaction does not increase with greater spousal contribution to these tasks but does increase when they themselves spend less time on paid work.

Keywords: Life satisfaction; Division of labour; Domestic labour; Market labour; Gender equality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-024-00796-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:jhappi:v:25:y:2024:i:6:d:10.1007_s10902-024-00796-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-024-00796-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().