Housework and the Wages of Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Workers

I. INTRODUCTION If childcare and other housework demand relatively large quantities of "energy" as compared to leisure and other non-market uses of time by men, women with responsibilities for housework would have less energy available for the market than men would. This would reduce the hourly earnings of married women, affect their jobs and occupations, and even lower their investment in market human capital when they work the same number of market hours as married men. Consequently, the housework responsibilities of married women may be the source of much of the difference in earnings and in job segregation between men and women. --Gary S. Becker (1985, p. S35) Consistent with Becker's hypothesis, employed women spend more hours on housework per week than do employed men on average. The magnitude of this gender gap in housework time is large, despite a reallocation of some housework activities from wives to husbands in recent years. Over the past 30 years, women's time spent in housework declined from four to three times that of men (Blau et al., 2002, p. 56). Because child care and housework continue to be primarily a woman's responsibility, many researchers have examined the extent to which the gender gap in housework time contributes to the gender wage gap. In general, these studies report that time spent on housework results in wage penalties, especially for married women, and including it in a wage regression increases the explained portion of the gender wage gap. What has not been examined is the effect of housework time on wages over the life cycle. Many aspects of housework are likely to vary over the life cycle, if for no other reason than individuals' fertility decisions are a function of age. It seems reasonable to assume that the total amount of housework required to maintain a family would depend on the size of the family and the ages of its members. As a young couple starts their family, the amount of housework necessary to take care of its members will increase. Conversely, as children age and leave the home, the total amount of required housework should decline. Additional housework responsibilities could arise from other sources, such as homeownership, which may be associated with specific stages of the life cycle. As the size of the family, the age of the children, and the probability of homeownership change over the life cycle, so, too, will the required amount of housework. The timing of housework tasks also may change over the life cycle. Some household chores must be performed continuously during the week, for example, meal preparation; whereas others can wait until the weekend, for example, yard work. Individuals who can postpone their housework tasks to nonwork days may not face the same energy constraint as their counterparts who are required to perform housework on workdays. Housework time may have differential wage effects, for the same number of hours per week, for individuals who perform it continually throughout the week versus those who regard it as primarily a weekend activity. There may be less flexibility in the timing of housework if children, especially young children, reside in the home. For this reason, there may be life-cycle effects associated with the timing of housework as well. There is also the possibility that the intensity of effort associated with an hour of housework time changes over the life cycle. The effort intensity associated with housework is likely to be a function of the type of housework performed. Some chores call for more effort than do others, for example, emptying the dishwasher versus cooking the meal; paying the bills versus mowing the lawn, and so on. Furthermore, the effort associated with typical housework tasks (meal preparation, cleaning, etc.) may be more intensive when combined with the presence of young children. As the nest starts to empty, the effort associated with certain types of housework is likely to decrease. …