What Time Use Surveys Can (And Cannot) Tell Us About Labor Supply

Cheng Chou (cchou@le.ac.uk) and Ruoyao Shi (ruoyao.shi@ucr.edu)
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Cheng Chou: University of Leicester

No 202017, Working Papers from University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics

Abstract: The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) accurately measures hours worked on a single day. Employing the potential outcome framework, we show that weekly labor supply parameters can be consistently estimated using the ATUS daily hours, but recovering weekly hours or their distribution is impossible due to the time specificity problem. We propose and carefully examine the properties of several new estimators. We recommend the impute estimator, a simple modification of the 2SLS estimator by imputing the dependent variable using daily subsamples. We apply it to the ATUS and find substantially different elasticity estimates from the CPS, especially for married women.

Keywords: labor supply; time specificity; impute estimator; relative asymptotic efficiency; survey methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C26 C81 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 Pages
Date: 2019-01, Revised 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ore
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/202017.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)
https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/202017R.pdf Revised version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: What Time Use Surveys Can (And Cannot) Tell Us about Labor Supply (2019)
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