An Empirical Analysis of the Time Allocation of Italian Couples: Are Italian Men Irresponsive?

Hans Bloemen (), Silvia Pasqua and Elena Stancanelli

No 3823, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper analyzes the time allocation of Italian spouses to paid work, childcare and household work. The literature suggests that Italian husbands contribute the least to unpaid household work, relative to other European countries, while Italian women have the lowest market employment rates. We model the three different time uses simultaneously for the two spouses within each household, allowing for corner solutions and correlations in the unobservables across the system of six equations. To estimate the model we use data drawn from the 2002-03 Italian Time Use Survey, combined with earnings information taken from the 2002 Bank of Italy Survey. We conclude that Italian husbands' time allocation responds to their wife's attributes: in particular, husbands' housework time increases with the wage of their wife. On the contrary, the own wage effect is significantly negative for housework of women. Childcare time of fathers increases with own wage and with the presence of small children and this is true both for weekdays and weekends.

Keywords: household economics; work behaviour; time allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 D13 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published as "An empirical analysis of the time allocation of Italian couples: are they responsive?" in: Review of Economics of the Household, 2010, 8 (3), 345-369

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Related works:
Working Paper: An Empirical Analysis of the Time Allocation of Italian Couples: Are Italian Men Irresponsive? (2008)
Working Paper: An Empirical Analysis of the Time Allocation of Italian Couples: Are Italian Men Irresponsive? (2008)
Working Paper: An Empirical Analysis of the Time Allocation of Italian Couples: Are Italian Men Irresponsive? (2008)
Working Paper: An Empirical Analysis of the Time Allocation of Italian Couples: Are Italian Men Irresponsive? (2008)
Working Paper: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE TIME ALLOCATION OF ITALIAN COUPLES: ARE ITALIAN MEN IRRESPONSIVE? (2008)
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