Parental Child Care in Single Parent, Cohabiting, and Married Couple Families: Time Diary Evidence from the United States and the United Kingdom

Charlene Kalenkoski, David Ribar and Leslie Stratton

Economics Working Paper Archive from Levy Economics Institute

Abstract: This study uses time diary data from the 2003 American Time Use Survey and the United Kingdom Time Use Survey 2000 to examine the time that single, cohabiting, and married parents devote to caring for their children. Time spent in market work, in child care as a primary activity, and in child care as a passive activity are jointly modeled using a correlated, censored regression model. Separate estimates are provided by gender, by country, and by weekend/weekday day. We find no evidence that these time allocation decisions differ for cohabiting and married parents, but there is evidence that single persons allocate time differently - as might be expected, given different household time constraints. In the U.S. single fathers spend significantly more time in primary child care on weekdays and substantially less time in passive child care on weekends than their married or cohabiting counterparts, while in the UK single fathers spend significantly more time in passive child care on weekdays. Single fathers in each country report less time at work on weekdays than their married or cohabiting counterparts. In the U.S., single mothers work more than married or cohabiting mothers on weekdays, while single mothers in the United Kingdom work less than married or cohabiting mothers on all days.

Date: 2006-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_440.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_440.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://levyweb.bard.edu/pubs/wp_440.pdf)

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:lev:wrkpap:wp_440

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Paper Archive from Levy Economics Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elizabeth Dunn ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).