Togetherness in the Household

Abstract

Spending time with a spouse is a major gain from marriage. We extend the classical collective model of the household to allow for togetherness between spouses. Togetherness takes the form of joint leisure and joint care for children. Using revealed preference conditions and Dutch data over the years 2009–2012, we find that households are willing to pay €1.20 per hour—10 percent of the average wage—to convert private leisure to joint leisure and €2.10 per hour to convert private childcare to joint childcare. Our results suggest togetherness is an important component of household time use despite being overlooked in the economics literature. (JEL D12, D13, J12, J13, J16, J22)

The association between marital locus of control and break‐up intentions

“…As part of our research agenda, we intend to extend the analysis to a larger sample placing special emphasis on gender roles, the type of conjugal relation, the gender division of household chores, and social norms. Besides, togetherness has been recently revealed as an important gain from sentimental relationships (Cosaert et al, 2023). It would be interesting to explore the moderating effects of spending time together for explaining the connection between MLC trait couple stability.…”

Temperature and Joint Time Use

“…Michaud and Vermeulen (2011) admitted leisure complementarity between spouses in the collective model of Chiappori (1992). Fong and Zhang (2001), Browning et al (2020), andCosaert et al (2023) made a formal distinction between leisure alone and joint leisure with the spouse. To our knowledge, Jenkins and Osberg (2004) is the only other paper that has leisure alone, leisure with family, as well as leisure with friends as separate arguments in the utility function.…”

Parents' Separation: What is the Effect on Parents' and Children's Time Investments?*

“…Empirical studies find a complementarity in leisure time and suggest that parents have a preference for spending leisure time together with children (Pailhé and Solaz, 2004). Cosaert, Theloudis and Verheyden (2020) estimate that households pay at least 2.08 euros per hour (17% of the average wage) to convert individual child-care to joint care. Women may however react less strongly to their spouse's behaviour (Van Soest and Stancanelli, 2012).…”

“…6 Nevertheless, Agostinelli and Sorrenti (2018) find that an increase in the mother's labour supply negatively affects a child's development by around 6% of a standard deviation, the effect of the decrease in parental time investments overcoming the income effect. parent's time investment (Cosaert, Theloudis and Verheyden, 2020). On the other hand, if the parent's bargaining power decreases when she starts to live with her new partner, and if this partner is less altruistic about her child, the resources available for the child's development might be 'taxed' by this new partner (see Ginther and Pollak, 2004, for a more detailed discussion).…”