Monthly Labor Review February 2002 45

Measuring Time Use

Measuring time use in households

with more than one person

The U.S. Government’s first-ever national time-use survey

will collect time diary data from one respondent per household,

forgoing the opportunity to provide information

about how nonmarket time is allocated between husbands and wives;

Canada’s General Social Survey, similar in approach,

uses stylized questions to elicit that very information

Anne E. Winkler

Anne E. Winkler is

associate professor of

economics and public

policy administration,

Department of

Economics, University of

Missouri–St. Louis.

I

n an effort to measure time spent on unpaid

activities such as commuting, performing

housework, and spending time with one’s children, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is designing

the Government’s first national time-use survey.1

A large number of countries, including Australia

and Canada, also have national surveys underway. A recent publication of the National Research

Council makes a convincing argument that Government time-use surveys should be designed

with an eye toward finding out about how

nonmarket time is allocated in households with

more than one person—that is, how domestic

partners divide the time they spend on tasks such

as housework and child care.2 As just one example, time-use data are needed on both partners

to fully assess the challenges faced by workers in

dual-earner families as they seek to balance the

competing demands of paid work and family.3 Indeed, argues Timothy M. Smeeding, “time use

data may be as important as income, consumption, and wealth data for informing public

policy.”4

As described in the National Research Council

volume and as reviewed in this article, Australia,

the United States, and Canada have adopted

somewhat different survey methodologies. Their

varying approaches have implications for both

the type and quality of data gathered. Australia,

for instance, which has undertaken one of the

most ambitious time-use collection efforts, is able

to directly investigate how time is divided up between partners. Australia collects personal time

diaries for all household members aged 15 and

older in households with more than one person,

as well as in households with one person. In these

diaries, household members record how they

spend their time as their day unfolds.5 Time-use

estimates collected this way have been found to

be highly reliable.6

In comparison, a considerably more modest

national time-use survey has been proposed by

the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, the

Bureau). In the BLS survey, diary reports will be

collected from one respondent per household,

using a subsample of households that recently

completed their final Current Population Survey

(CPS) interview.7 The reports will be obtained by

means of a retrospective telephone interview, in

which an interviewer asks the respondent about

what he or she was doing over the course of the

previous day. The response thus requires no more

than a 24-hour recall capability on the part of the

respondent. This approach also has been found

to provide valid estimates and is considerably

less expensive to implement than the Australian

approach.8

One extremely useful feature of the BLS survey

is that it will be possible to match the data from

the diary with demographic and labor force information from the CPS. Unfortunately, the usefulness of the information gained will fall far short of

that gleaned from the Australian survey because

of the time diary approach used. To make mean-
46 Monthly Labor Review February 2002

Measuring Time Use

ingful intrahousehold comparisons, all respondents in a given

household must report on events that occurred on the same

day. Such data, however, are particularly difficult to obtain

when a 24-hour retrospective survey is used, which explains

why only one respondent per household is contacted.9

Hence, the BLS data will make it possible to analyze, for instance, the use of time of a wife or a husband, but not both, in

a given household.

Canada, by contrast, has taken what is termed here a “middle

approach.” In the 1992 and 1998 Canadian General Social Survey, diary information is collected from one respondent per

household, using a retrospective telephone interview, as in

the BLS survey. However, as pointed out by Lorna Bailie in

the National Research Council publication, the Canadian survey augments the data from the diary by also asking respondents direct, stylized questions about their own and their partners’ use of time in several unpaid activities.10 Hence, the

Canadian survey appears to have the advantage of eliciting

some information about what is going on within families,

although, as will be discussed, this approach has some important limitations.

This article more fully considers the Canadian “middle approach” and assesses its potential usefulness for the United

States. Toward that end, the article draws upon relevant U.S.

and Canadian studies and then analyzes some data on

nonmarket time from the 1992–94 National Survey of Families

and Households.

Assessing the Canadian approach

In the 1992 and 1998 versions of the Canadian General Social

Survey, respondents began the telephone interview by reporting on their activities during the previous day in a diary

format. Later, they were asked stylized direct questions about

their own unpaid activities and about those of their spouses;

in effect, the respondents were thereby serving as proxy reporters. Notably, the survey also asked about the activities of

opposite-sex cohabiting partners. For instance, in the 1992

version of the survey, respondents were asked the following

questions:11 (1) “Last week, did you spend any time doing

housework, including cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping

and laundry for your household?” and, if so, “for how many

hours?” (2) Last week, did you do any unpaid work to maintain or improve your house, yard, or automobile?” and, if so,

“for how many hours?” and (3) “Last week, how many hours

did you spend looking after children who live in your household?” Next, respondents were asked identical questions

about their partners (with “he/she” replacing “you” in the

questions). In the 1998 survey, respondents were asked

slightly different versions of these questions, although the

questions about their partners’ activities remained the same.12

This section investigates the pros and cons of following

Canada’s lead and including similar types of stylized questions in the proposed BLS survey.13 Notably, such questions

are already included in several U.S. surveys. The National

Survey of Families and Households, for instance, asks both

husbands and wives a series of questions about their own

and their partners’ unpaid activities. Similarly, the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics regularly asks respondents about

their own and their spouses’ time spent in housework and, on

occasion, has obtained self-reports from both.14 These surveys, among others, have been utilized extensively to analyze

the division of labor within the household for the 1980s and

1990s and have yielded useful information.15

Stylized questions require relatively little time to answer

and are relatively inexpensive to collect, two features that

support the argument to include such questions in the BLS

survey as well. Also, because the questions refer to a 1-week

period, they have the advantage of including all weekdays

and the weekend, not just a single day.16

In addition, incorporating multiple measures of time use

into the same survey has the important advantage of allowing

for direct comparisons of the responses.17 In the past, researchers using U.S. data have invariably had to rely on ad

hoc comparisons in assessing bias—for instance, comparing

diary data from one survey with stylized questions from another.18 Information gleaned from stylized questions may also

be useful in and of itself. For example, it has been argued that

when it comes to child care, diary questions and stylized questions may actually separately identify two important, but fundamentally different, variables.19

The benefits of including stylized questions, however, depend on the quality of the questions being asked, as well as

on their comparability with diary questions. As a case in point,

it is critical that the survey questions that respondents answer about their own and their partners’ use of time have

precisely the same wording, so as to permit meaningful comparisons of these reports for each couple. As mentioned, identical questions were asked in the 1992 Canadian survey, but

not in the 1998 one, making the later survey far less useful for

purposes of comparison.

An often-expressed concern about stylized questions is

that respondents have to go through an extensive “cognitive

process” in answering such questions and may have varying

interpretations of the questions asked.20 For instance, what

specific tasks are subsumed under question (1), which asks

about “housework?” This issue came to the fore in a recent

study by Bernie Paille, in which he used the 1992 Canadian

General Social Survey to compare respondents’ time-use estimates based on the stylized questions set forth at the beginning of this section with estimates based on diary information

from the same survey. While most researchers have found

that estimates from stylized questions are higher than those

obtained from a time-diary approach, Paille found precisely
Monthly Labor Review February 2002 47

the opposite regarding time spent in housework. A partial explanation offered in his study is that respondents may not

have counted shopping as part of housework in their response

to question (1), thereby leading estimates based on that question to be considerably lower than the diary estimates (which

included estimates of time spent shopping).21 This example

suggests that stylized questions must be worded as carefully

as possible and should be more narrowly focused than in the

Canadian survey.

Other standard concerns have been raised as well, both in

the National Research Council publication and elsewhere. For

instance, the stylized direct questions asked in the Canadian

survey require that respondents recall events during the previous week, increasing the probability of recall error compared

with its likelihood in a diary approach, which requires 24-hour

recall at most.

Another concern is that direct-question estimates about

unpaid activities, such as time spent reading to children, may

partly reflect societal expectations about those activities.22

Diary estimates are less likely to be subject to this type of bias

because respondents are not prompted to record specific activities. Julie E. Press and Eleanor Townsley suggest further

that the degree of bias in responses to stylized questions may

differ for women and men due to “changing and uneven social perceptions of [their] appropriate domestic roles.”23 For

example, husbands may be especially inclined to overstate

the number of hours they engage in housework because of

societal expectations that they should be doing more of it.

Further, in answering stylized questions, respondents may

provide estimates for times when simultaneous activities are

being carried out. Indeed, for all these various reasons, directquestion estimates of total hours spent doing housework,

obtained by summing up estimates of time spent performing

specific tasks, may exceed the number of available (or reasonably available) hours in a week, as will be seen shortly in data

from the National Survey of Families and Households. All

told, researchers have almost invariably found that stylized

questions overestimate time use, compared with the more reliable diary approach.24

While legitimate concerns about stylized questions have

been raised and must be seriously considered, there is some

evidence that the ratio of wives’ to husbands’ estimates of

hours is fairly similar across survey methods.25 Also, trends

and patterns identified in estimates of absolute levels of hours

of housework for men and for women, both employed and

otherwise, have been found to be fairly consistent across

survey methods.26 Further, if stylized questions such as those

used in Canada—with some modifications—were included in

the proposed BLS survey, they would provide at least some

indication of the intrahousehold allocation of nonmarket time,

an issue that cannot be investigated at all with the currently

suggested design.

Another important concern about stylized reports also must

be considered: Can we can reasonably rely on husbands’ responses about wives’ use of time in unpaid activities or wives’

responses about husbands’ use of time? Notably, this issue,

which applies directly to the approach taken in the Canadian

survey, as well as to other surveys, including the Panel Study

of Income Dynamics and the National Survey of Families and

Households, was not mentioned in the recent volume on timeuse measurement by the National Research Council or in the

reports by Statistics Canada reviewed herein.27

Mounting evidence indicates that estimates of time spent

in housework differ, depending on who makes the report: the

individuals themselves or proxy reporters. This difference

suggests that the answer to the question about whether we

can reasonably rely on husbands’ responses regarding wives’

use of time and wives’ responses regarding husbands’ use of

time is “no” or, at best, “It depends.” Results based on data

from the 1990s are presented shortly.28 As might be expected,

this issue is not unique to questions regarding housework or

nonmarket time in general. Proxy reports and self-reports have

been found to differ on issues as diverse as parents’ desired

family size, wives’ performance as parents and spouses, and

parental bequests to children, to name a few. One notable

exception is responses to questions about educational attainment, which generally match up, but this is to be expected,

because such information can be both readily and objectively

ascertained.29

Psychologists and sociologists point to several reasons as

to why self-reports and proxy (spousal) reports of housework

hours obtained from stylized questions might differ. One reason is egocentric bias; that is, individuals tend to recall a

greater proportion of their own housework activity than their

spouses do.30 It is not possible to say whether self-reports or

proxy reports made by spouses are more accurate, but the two

kinds of reports are expected to be correlated. As Sarah F.

Berk and Anthony Shih point out, many household tasks are

performed in clear view for spouses to see, and, they argue,

perhaps as important, spouses tend to share similar views

about gender roles in the household—views that also inform

these reports.31 Further, Berk and Shih argue that there is

likely to be relatively stronger agreement regarding wives’

household activities because the home has been the traditional sphere for women and its norms and patterns are better

established.

Comparison of self- and spousal reports

An excellent data set that affords information on the degree

to which self-reports and spousal reports on housework are

reasonable proxies for one another is the National Survey of

Families and Households.32 The survey provides four reports

on time spent by couples in housework: wives’ reports on
48 Monthly Labor Review February 2002

Measuring Time Use

their own housework hours; husbands’ reports on their own

housework hours; husbands’ reports about their wives’ housework hours; and wives’ reports about their husbands’ housework hours. These reports have been compared and analyzed in

a number of studies.33 Following is a similar analysis, pointing

to the patterns and findings that are most relevant in assessing

the usefulness of the Canadian survey.

The National Survey of Families and Households is a nationally representative survey of households that was first conducted in 1987–88. The survey had a sample of 13,007 respondents. Partners and spouses of respondents were interviewed as

well. In the second wave, conducted from 1992 to 1994, the

respondents were reinterviewed. Response rates were 82 percent for main respondents and 86 percent for partners.34 In the

1992–94 wave, which makes up the data to be analyzed shortly,

there were 5,751 married respondents. To create a sample of

matched husbands and wives, the analysis includes only those

couples for whom survey data on both spouses are available

(5,001). The sample was further restricted to those couples in

which both spouses are age 25 or older (4,894).

In the survey, information on time spent on housework was

collected for nine specific tasks, based on the recall of the

respondent (or partner) to the following question: “Write in

the approximate number of hours per week that you, your

spouse/partner, or others in the household normally spend

doing the following things.” The tasks that follow are preparing meals; washing dishes and cleaning up after meals; housecleaning; shopping for groceries and other household goods;

washing, ironing, and mending; outdoor and other household maintenance tasks; auto maintenance and repair; paying

bills and keeping other financial records; and driving other

household members to work, school, or other activities. Total

weekly housework hours are computed by summing up the

time spent in each of these nine tasks. For a small fraction of

the sample (under 4 percent), the number of hours of housework they engaged in totaled in excess of 100 per week, but

were capped at 100.35 The final sample analyzed in this article

(3,662) includes only those couples with “complete” information on hours of housework, where “complete” information is

defined as information on all nine housework tasks for all four

reports.36 Weights provided in the survey are used to make

the estimates nationally representative.

As shown in table 1, wives estimate that they spend 37.2

hours per week, on average, engaged in the housework tasks

described in the previous paragraph. Similarly, husbands report

that their wives spend nearly that much time doing housework,

namely, 36.9 hours. The median difference in husbands’ and

wives’ reports about how much time wives spend on housework tasks is zero. These findings suggest that who makes the

report regarding wives’ activities matters little when wives’ average time spent doing housework is the question at hand.

However, the fact that mean reports match up overall does

not necessarily indicate agreement in reports between husbands and wives who live together. Chart 1 is a plot of reports

from matched pairs of husbands and wives regarding wives’

housework hours. If there were perfect consensus among all

spousal pairs (equal to a correlation coefficient of unity), all

sample points would lie along a 45-degree line, running from

the lower left corner to the upper right corner of the chart. The

actual data show that, while the mean estimate of time spent

on housework by wives (37 hours per week) virtually lies on

this line, the scatter of reports around the line indicates that

there is far less than perfect consensus within couples. In

fact, the correlation of reports is only 0.46. There is, however,

some question as to whether to interpret this correlation as

high or low, because its magnitude is, in part, affected by the

degree of precision required of the reporters.37 In particular,

spouses are being asked to determine their use of time within

a 1-hour increment, which is fairly exacting. As a point of

comparison, the correlation between husbands’ and wives’

estimates of wives’ share of total time spent by the couple in

housework (computed with the use of their reports on hours)

is as high as 0.60, although still less than unity. What we can

safely conclude from these data is that there is less spousal

consensus about wives’ time spent doing housework when

we compare reports by husbands and wives living together

than when we look at averages across all husbands and wives.

Chart 2 plots husbands’ self-reports and wives’ proxy reports regarding husbands’ hours of housework. These reports

are more concentrated near zero, because husbands do considerably less housework, on average, than wives. Analysis

of the data indicates that the correlation of husbands’ selfreports and their wives’ proxy reports is 0.37, somewhat lower

than the 0.46 correlation of reports about wives. Further, consensus is lacking even about mean hours husbands spend on

housework tasks. Husbands estimate that, on average, they

spend 20 hours per week doing household tasks, while their

wives report a somewhat lower figure of 17.7 hours.

One important quantitative implication of this brief empirical analysis is that husbands and wives have very different

assessments about the gender gap in weekly housework hours

within married-couple households. As table 1 shows, husbands’ reports about their own and their wives’ hours indicate a 16.9-hour-per-week gender difference, while wives’ reports about their own and their husbands’ hours point to a

19.5-hour-per-week gender difference. Again, as noted earlier,

it is not possible to discern which assessment is more accurate, but what we can say for sure is that researchers, such as

those using the Canadian data, must carefully consider who

is doing the reporting, as well as the possibility that such

estimates may be inflated compared with diary estimates, regardless of who is the reporter.

THE PROPOSED BLS SURVEY WOULD BE CONSIDERABLY MORE
Monthly Labor Review February 2002 49

USEFUL if it regularly collected time-use data on both partners

living in the same household. These data would aid in achieving a better understanding of the effects of policies such as

welfare reform, family leave, and child care on the well-being of

couples and their children. Further, as surveys are repeated,

the data would provide important information about the ways

in which women’s and men’s roles in the household are changing and about the implications of those changes for children.

The Australian approach of collecting diary information from

0 20 40 60 80 100

Wives' self-reports

0

20

40

60

80

100

Chart 1. Wives' housework hours

Husbands' reports 

about wives

NOTE: Plot is based on 3,662 matched husband-wife pairs from the 1992–94 National Survey of Families and Households. Housework 

hours are capped at 100 per week.

more than one household member does not appear to be a

realistic option for the United States, given present budgetary

constraints. By contrast, the approach taken by Canada, which

is to collect diary information from one respondent per household and also ask respondents stylized questions about their

own and their partners’ use of time, is feasible for the United

States and has merit, although it is by no means ideal. This

approach would provide information about partners’ division

of labor in the household, but, unfortunately, not about other
50 Monthly Labor Review February 2002

Measuring Time Use

0 20 40 60 80 100

Husbands' self-reports

0

20

40

60

80

100

Chart 2. Husbands' housework hours

Wives' reports about 

husbands

NOTE: Plot is based on 3,662 matched husband-wife pairs from the 1992–94 National Survey of Families and Households. Housework 

hours are capped at 100 per week.

household members’ use of time. On the positive side again,

including the two major time-use collection methods in the

same survey would allow for valuable sensitivity testing.

Taking this two-pronged approach, though, raises legitimate concerns about biases in stylized data, including those

which result from using proxy reports. For instance, this article has shown that estimates of the within-couple gender

gap in housework differ significantly, depending on whether

wives or husbands are doing the reporting. In the short term,

this means that findings must be interpreted carefully and

possible biases must be acknowledged.

In the long term, detailed comparisons between responses

to diary and stylized questions asked on the same survey

should make it possible for researchers to improve the quality

of the stylized questions and quantify the extent of bias,

thereby increasing the reliability and usefulness of the styl-
Monthly Labor Review February 2002 51

Survey Program: The Case of Time-Use Surveys at the BLS” (Bureau of

Labor Statistics, December 1999); and National Research Council

(Michele Ver Ploeg, Joseph Altonji, Norman Bradburn, Julie DaVanzo,

William Nordhaus, and Francisco Samaniego, eds.), Time-Use Measurement and Research: Report of a Workshop (Washington, DC, National

Academy Press, 2000), chapter 6.

2

 National Research Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research,

chapter 5.

3

 These and many other uses are described in National Research

Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research, chapters 1 and 5.

4

 Timothy M. Smeeding, “Time and Public Policy: Why Do We

Care and What Instruments are Needed?” paper presented at the Conference on Time Use, Non-Market Work and Family Well-Being, Washington, DC, November 20–21, 1997.

5

 This description is from National Research Council, Time-Use

Measurement and Research, chapter 4.

6

 For evidence, see F. Thomas Juster and Frank P. Stafford, “The

Allocation of Time: Empirical Findings, Behavioral Models, and Problems of Measurement,” Journal of Economic Literature, June 1991,

pp. 471–522.

7

 Horrigan and Herz, “A Study in the Process of Planning and

Designing.” The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey

of about 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for

the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey has been conducted for more

than 50 years.

1

 See Linda L. Stinson, “Measuring how people spend their time: a

time-use survey design,” Monthly Labor Review, August 1999, pp. 12–

19; Mary Joyce and Jay Stewart, “What can we learn from time-use

data?” Monthly Labor Review, August 1999, pp. 3–6; Michael Horrigan

and Diane Herz, “A Study in the Process of Planning and Designing a

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: This article has benefited from discussions

with Michael Allison, Jennifer Coats, Marianne Ferber, Thomas

Ireland, Sharon Levin, Robert Pollak, Shirley Porterfield, David Rose,

and Robert Sorensen. I am grateful to Statistics Canada for providing

Weekly hours spent doing housework, responses

based on stylized questions, National Survey of

Families and Households, 1992–94

Mean Standard

deviation Median

Table 1.

Category

children, but the same caveats would apply—indeed, perhaps

even more so—with respect to using proxy reports.

While the discussion and analysis presented in this article

have focused largely on married couples, data should also be

collected on the intrahousehold allocation of time among

unmarried couples, in light of the increasing prevalence of

that arrangement. For instance, as of the mid-1990s, no less

than 40 percent of women aged 15 to 44 had cohabited for

some period, although such arrangements tend to be of short

duration, because the couple breaks up or marries.39

In conclusion, stylized questions regarding spouses’ activities have been included in the Canadian General Social

Survey and in several U.S. surveys and have been found to

provide useful information. If these questions were included

in the proposed BLS survey, they would provide at least some

indication of the intrahousehold allocation of nonmarket time

between partners in the same household, an issue that the

Bureau cannot investigate with its diary approach.

The CPS is the primary source of information on the labor force

characteristics of the U.S. population. The sample is scientifically

selected to represent the civilian noninstitutional population. Respondents are interviewed to obtain information about the employment status

of each member of the household 15 years of age and older. However,

published data focus on those aged 16 and older. The sample provides

estimates for the Nation as a whole and serves as part of model-based

estimates for individual states and other geographic areas.

Among the data obtained from the CPS are estimates of employment,

unemployment, earnings, hours of work, and other indicators. These

estimates are available by a variety of demographic characteristics, including age, sex, race, marital status, and educational attainment, and

also by occupation, industry, and class of worker. Supplemental questions

to produce estimates on a variety of topics, including school enrollment,

income, previous work experience, health, employee benefits, and work

schedule, are also often added to the regular CPS questionnaire.

8

 For evidence regarding the validity of the approach, see Juster and

Stafford, “The Allocation of Time.” Regarding cost, see Stinson, “Measuring how people spend their time.”

9

 Stinson, “Measuring how people spend their time.” In addition, a

pilot survey in Canada examined collecting diaries from more than one

household member by phone, but found that the response rates were

unacceptably low. (See National Research Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research, p. 30.)

10 National Research Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research,

chapter 4.

11 The questions were obtained directly from General Social Science

Time Use Questionnaire, GSS 7–2 (Ottawa, Statistics Canada, 1992).

12 Specifically, the 1998 survey asked respondents the following

questions: (1) “Last week, how many hours did you spend looking after

one or more of your own children or the children of others, without

pay?” (2) “Last week, how many hours did you spend doing unpaid

housework, yard work, or home maintenance for members of your

household or others?” and (3) “Last week, how many hours did you

spend providing unpaid care or assistance to one or more seniors?”

These questions were obtained directly from General Social Science

ized-question reports.38 Stylized questions could also be

asked about other household members, including seniors and

Wives’ housework hours:

Wives’ self-reports .......................... 37.24 22.15 33

Husbands’ reports on wives .............. 36.85 21.99 32

Husbands’ housework hours:

Husbands’ self-reports ..................... 19.98 14.66 17

Wives’ reports on husbands .............. 17.73 15.49 14

Discrepancies in housework reports:

Wives’ housework hours ................... .394 22.92 2

0

Husbands’ housework hours .............. 12.26 16.94 22

Within-couple gender gap

in housework hours, based on:

Husbands’ and wives’ self-reports ....... 17.26 25.76 2

14

Wives’ reports ................................ 19.51 22.18 217

Husbands’ reports ........................... 16.86 21.94 2

14

Wives’ reported gap minus husbands’

reported gap ................................... 12.65 21.25 2

2

1Discrepancy in reports is statistically significant at the 5-percent level

in a two-tailed t-test. 2Median difference in housework reports (not difference in the medians) is

computed.

NOTE: Estimates are drawn from 3,662 husband-wife pairs and are

computed with the use of sample weights.

needed survey information. All errors are mine alone.
52 Monthly Labor Review February 2002

Measuring Time Use

Survey, GSS Cycle 12—Time Use Survey (Ottawa, Statistics Canada,

1998). It appears that the wording of the questions was made to match

that of questions in the 1996 Canadian census, although because of the

match, the questions asked of respondents to the 1998 survey are not

identical to those asked of their spouses.

13 For critiques of the stylized-question method, see Bernie Paille,

“Estimating the Volume of Unpaid Activities in Canada, 1992: An

Evaluation of Data from the General Social Survey,” General Social

Survey Working Paper No. 10 (Ottawa, Statistics Canada, January

1994); National Research Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research, chapter 4; Margaret Mooney Marini and Beth Anne Shelton,

“Measuring Household Work: Recent Experience in the United States,”

Social Science Research, December 1993, pp. 361–82; and Juster and

Stafford, “The Allocation of Time.”

14 Most studies investigating the division of labor using the National

Survey of Families and Households have relied on husbands’ and wives’

self-reports, rather than on proxy reports, with the exception of a few

methodological studies, which will be discussed shortly. In contrast,

studies using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics have relied more

often on proxy reports because self-reports for both spouses are available for only select years. Joni Hersch and Leslie S. Stratton, for instance, rely on husbands’ proxy reports for their wives in “Housework,

Fixed Effects, and Wages of Married Workers,” Journal of Human

Resources, spring 1997, pp. 285–307.

15 For a worthwhile review, see Beth Anne Shelton and Daphne John,

“The Division of Household Labor,” Annual Review of Sociology, vol.

22, 1996, pp. 299–322.

16 Paille, “Volume of Unpaid Activities.”

17 National Research Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research,

chapter 5; and Marini and Shelton, “Measuring Household Work.”

18 See, for instance, Suzanne M. Bianchi, Melissa A. Milkie, Liana C.

Sayer, and John P. Robinson, “Is Anyone Doing the Housework?” Trends

in the Gender Division of Household Labor,” Social Forces, September

2000, pp. 1–39; and Julie E. Press and Eleanor Townsley, “Wives’ and

Husbands’ Housework Reporting: Gender, Class, and Social Desirability,” Gender and Society, April 1998, pp. 188–219. For supporting

evidence, see Marini and Shelton, “Measuring Household Work.”

19 Leroy O. Stone and Sandra Swain, “The 1996 Census Unpaid Work

Data Evaluation Study” (Ottawa, Statistics Canada, 2000).

20 Paille, “Volume of Unpaid Activities,” p. 6.

21 Ibid, p. 12.

22 For evidence, see Sandra L. Hofferth, “Family Reading to Young

Children: Social Desirability and Cultural Biases in Reporting,” paper

presented at the National Research Council Workshop on Measurement of and Research on Time Use, May 27–28, 1998.

23 Press and Townsley, “Wives’ and Husbands’ Housework Reporting,”

p. 188.

24 In fact, one study found that estimates of housework hours are as

much as 50 percent higher when obtained from stylized questions. (See

Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, and Robinson, “Is Anyone Doing the Housework?” See also Juster and Stafford, “The Allocation of Time”; Marini

and Shelton, “Measuring Household Work”; and National Research

Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research, chapter 4.)

25 See, for instance, Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, and Robinson, “Is Anyone Doing the Housework?” which compares 1995 diary data collected

by the University of Maryland with data from the 1992–94 National

Survey of Families and Households.

26 See Francine D. Blau, Marianne A. Ferber, and Anne E. Winkler,

The Economics of Women, Men, and Work (Upper Saddle River, NJ,

Prentice Hall, 2002), especially chapter 3; and Marini and Shelton,

“Measuring Household Work.”

27 Stone and Swain, “The 1996 Census,” mention concerns about

proxy reporting in the 1996 Canadian Census, but do not address the

issue with regard to the case of stylized questions.

28 For early evidence that estimates of time spent in housework differ,

see Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly, “Egocentric Biases in Availability and

Attribution,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, March 1979,

pp. 322–36; Sarah Fenstermaker Berk and Anthony Shih, “Contributions to Household Labor: Comparing Wives’ and Husbands’ Reports,” in

Sarah Fenstermaker Berk (ed.), Women and Household Labor (Beverly

Hills, CA, Sage, 1980); and Catherine E. Ross and John Mirowsky, “The

Social Construction of Reality in Marriage: An Empirical Investigation,” Sociological Perspectives, July 1984, pp. 281–300.

29 Monica Biernat and Camille B. Wortmann, “Sharing of Home

Responsibilities between Professional Employed Women and Their

Husbands,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 1991,

pp. 844–60; Richard Williams and Elizabeth Thomson, “Can Spouses

Be Trusted? A Look at Husband/Wife Proxy Reports,” Demography,

February 1985, pp. 115–22; Jere R. Behrman and Mark R. Rosenzweig,

“In-Law Resources, Parental Resources and Distribution within Marriage,” mimeograph, University of Pennsylvania, 1998; and Orley

Ashenfelter and Cecilia Rouse, “Income, Schooling, and Ability: Evidence from a New Sample of Identical Twins,” Quarterly Journal of

Economics, February 1998, pp. 253–84.

30 Ross and Sicoly offer four reasons, none of which need result from

intentional deceit: (1) selective encoding and storage of information,

(2) differential retrieval, (3) informational disparities, and (4) motivational influences.

31 Berk and Shih, “Contributions to Household Labor.”

32 The survey affords only comparisons of housework, not asking at

all about time spent in child care as a separate activity. However, the

presence of children is reflected somewhat in the housework data that

are collected, because children increase their parents’ time spent doing

laundry, cleaning up, and so on.

33 See, for example, Yoshinori Kamo, “He Said, She Said: Assessing

Discrepancies in Husbands’ and Wives’ Reports in the Division of Labor, Social Science Research, December 2000, pp. 458–76; and Marini

and Shelton, “Measuring Household Work.”

34 See Pamela J. Smock and Wendy D. Manning, “Cohabiting Partners’ Economic Circumstances and Marriage,” Demography, August

1997, pp. 331–41.

35 All studies using the National Survey of Families and Households cap

housework hours in some way, either by choosing an absolute maximum,

as is done here (see Theodore N. Greenstein, “Husbands’ Participation in

Domestic Labor: Interactive Effects of Wives’ and Husbands’ Gender

Ideologies,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, March 1996, pp. 585–

95; and Kamo, “He Said, She Said”), or by adopting a percentile threshold

(see Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, and Robinson, “Is Anyone Doing the Housework?”). An absolute threshold is chosen in the current analysis so that

husbands’ and wives’ hours are capped at the same number.

36 The results presented do not appear to be sensitive to the decision to include only observations with “complete” housework records

or to the decision to cap housework hours at 100. The studies by

Kamo and by Marini and Shelton made somewhat different decisions

and obtained fairly similar estimates of means and discrepancies in

reports. (See Kamo, “He Said, She Said”; and Marini and Shelton,

“Measuring Household Work.”)

37 Rebecca L. Warner, “Alternative Strategies for Measuring Household Division of Labor,” Journal of Family Issues, June 1986, pp. 179–

95.

38 Similar points have been made by Norman Bradburn, cited in National Research Council, Time-Use Measurement and Research, chapters

5 and 6; and by Marini and Shelton, “Measuring Household Work.”

39 The 40-percent figure is from Statistical Abstract of the United

States: 1999 (Bureau of the Census, 2000), table 66. For some evidence

on the division of labor in unmarried households based on the National

Survey of Families and Households, see Scott J. South and Glenna Spitze,

“Housework in Marital and Nonmarital Households,” American Sociological Review, June 1994, pp. 327–47.