Market versus Non-Market Time Allocation in a Family Setting

Rachel Connelly, Bowdoin College
Jean Kimmel, Western Michigan University

Using the American Time Use Survey, this paper focuses on how time use decisions are related within the household. Because the ATUS provides time diaries for only one adult per household, it is not possible to model joint choices directly. Instead we implement a statistical matching approach in which we will “marry” husbands with wives across households to form synthetic couples. This methodology allows us to construct measures of household production, child caregiving, active leisure, and work time for each “husband” and “wife”, which are then used to construct relative time measures, e.g. the proportion of childcare done by the mother. Using these relative measures as dependent variables, we estimate a four equation simultaneous tobit model for mothers' and fathers' time use. The goal is to examine the role that spouses' time use, gender wage gaps, and demographic factors play in fundamental time allocation decisions between market and non-market time.