Intra-Household Work Timing: The Effect on Joint Activities and the Demand for Child Care

Abstract

We examine the work timing behavior of spouses. With work timing we mean the behavior that results in the performance of paid labor at the same time, that cannot be explained by factors other than the partners' potential to communicate on the timing of their work.We find that couples with children create less overlap in their work times and this effect is more pronounced the younger the children. In general, the household types that create relatively more work time overlap are households with higher educated women, with a higher household income, with less children, and with spouses who are more in control of their own working times.We find evidence for a togetherness preference of spouses, but we only find this togetherness preference for childless couples. Also, the joint time that spouses spend on household chores is significantly related to how couples time their working hours, but the correlation that is found is very small. There is no evidence that the timing of work hours affects the time that parents spend jointly on child care.Work timing behavior affects the demand for informal child care, but not the demand for formal child care. Parents with young children create relatively more overlap in their work times and demand more informal child care.JEL Codes: D13, I31, J12, J22

Honey, I’ll Be Working Late Tonight: The Effect of Individual Work Routines on Leisure Time Synchronization of Couples

“…A recent strand of the literature analyzes whether couples actively synchronize their schedules or whether simultaneous time is just a result from the general organization of activities across an average workday. In contrast to the data used in this paper, these studies lack information on whether time is indeed enjoyed together with the spouse so that joint time is generally proxied by simultaneous leisure which, as is revealed by figure 2 greatly overestimates the true amount of joint time and thus upward biases any results obtained on this basis (Hamermesh 2000, van Velzen 2001, Hallberg 2003, Lesnard 2004, van Klaveren et al 2006 …”

“…The results of this paper further contribute to another strand of the literature analyzing whether couples actively synchronize their schedules or whether simultaneous time is rather a result from the general organization of activities across an average workday. In contrast to the data used in this paper, most of these studies, however, lack information on whether time is indeed enjoyed together with the spouse (Hamermesh 2000, van Velzen 2001, Hallberg 2003, Lesnard 2004, van Klaveren et al 2006, van Klaveren and Maassen van den Brink 2007.…”

“…In this context, not only paid work but also unpaid household work and the link between both is closely studied to shed more light on the labor market participation decision of women, which is of great concern to both policy makers and researchers (Becker 1965, Gronau 1977, 1980, Becker 1981, Bird et al 1984, Gershuny and Sullivan 1998, Hersch and Stratton 2000, Apps 2004, Apps and Rees 1996, 1997, van Klaveren and Maassen van den Brink 2007. In contrast to that, other studies investigate the development of leisure time across the past decades (Bittman and Wajcman 2000, Hallberg 2003, Alesina et al 2005, Jenkins and Osberg 2005, Aguiar and Hurst 2007.…”