Timing and Flexibility of Housework and Men and Women's Wages
38 Pages Posted: 18 Sep 2003 Last revised: 16 Apr 2023
Abstract
This paper analyses the effect of housework on men and womens wages in Denmark byestimating quantile regressions on Danish time use survey data from 1987, merged toregister information on hourly wages and other labour market variables for each of the years1987-1991. We find, as in U.S. studies, that housework has negative effects on the wages ofwomen and positive effects on the wages of men, except at the high end of the conditionalwage distribution. At the 90th quantile, housework has a positive effect on the wages ofwomen and a negative effect on the wages of men, and in fact, high-wage men receive thelargest wage penalty of doing housework. Timing and flexibility of housework turn out to bemore important than the level of housework, and women, particularly at the high end of theconditional wage distribution, who time their housework immediately before or after marketwork or engage in home tasks that require contiguous blocks of time are significantlypenalized in terms of lower wages. These findings are even stronger for married andcohabiting couples and for workers on fixed time schedules as opposed to workers withflexible time schedules which are part of a bargain with the employer.
Keywords: timing, housework, time use, flexibility, wages
JEL Classification: D13, J16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation