The effect of spouses' relative education on household time allocation

Abstract

Does spouses' relative education explain their household's distribution of labor? This paper analyzes the effect of spouses' education on time allocated to housework and paid work. To address endogeneity concerns, I exploit changes in spouses' relative education due to remarriage to identify its effects on their time allocation. I find that when a husband marries a wife with a higher relative education than their previous spouse, his share of time on housework increases while his share of time on paid work decreases. In contrast, I find nonsignificant results when a wife remarries a more educated husband than her previous one. I also find that changes in the spouse's education reduce the probability of a spouse staying at home. These findings show that relative human capital plays a role in household labor distribution and motivates a more gender-neutral division of labor within households due to a more evenly distributed time allocation.

Differential Impact of Sharecropping on Time Allocation and Risk Transfer in Farming: An Islamic Economic Perspective

“…Still, the intersection between different forms of land ownership, cooperative preferences, and these outcomes remains an open field of inquiry, which this study aims to address [8]. Remarkable social phenomena observed in the world of agriculture highlight an increasing disparity in wealth and resource allocation, exacerbating the vulnerabilities of smallholder and tenant farmers [9]. These socioeconomic disparities are further magnified by the volatility of climate change, market fluctuations.…”