Housework, Money, and Marriage

Abstract

The sharing of public goods and services is one of the most important gains associated with forming a household, even exceeding the efficiency gains from specialization. Most of household public goods are produced using spouses's time, with men devoting about more than one hour per week to home labor and women spending about three hours. We use evidence from a variety of time-use surveys for a great number of countries and show that the total amount of time that individuals devote to household labor is greater if they live in a couple than if they live as single. In most countries the time devoted to housework is between 10 and 20 minutes per day higher for married than for single men, and between 15 to 45 minutes per day higher for married than for single women. We present a simple theory that encompasses the main mechanisms that could be behind the increase of home labor upon forming a household, such as the degree of substitution between private and public goods, or selection into marriage by those individuals with a higher taste for home labor. Using longitudinal data we reject selection, i.e. that tidier individuals select themselves into forming couples. By documenting how the time that is devoted to home production changes upon entering a union this paper provides further insights into the welfare gains of forming a couple.