¶ Market work, housework and childcare: A time use approach

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¶ BibTeX

@article{cardia2018market,
  title={Market work, housework and childcare: A time use approach},
  author={Cardia, Emanuela and Gomme, Paul},
  journal={Review of Economic Dynamics},
  volume={29},
  pages={1--14},
  year={2018},
  publisher={Elsevier}
}

¶ Abstract

Raising children takes considerable time, particularly for women. Yet, the role of childcare time has received scant attention in the macroeconomics literature. We develop a life-cycle model in which the time dimension of childcare plays a central role. An important contribution of the paper is estimation of the parameters of a childcare production function using data on primary and secondary childcare time as reported in the American Time Use Survey (2003–2014). The model does a better job matching the observed life-cycle patterns of womens’ time use than a model without childcare. Our counterfactual experiments show that the increase in the relative wage of women since the 1960s is an important factor in the increase in womens’ work time; changes in fertility associated with the baby boom play a smaller role, and changes in the price of durables are found to have a negligible effect. We consider the effects of cheaper daycare. Not surprisingly, this experiment leads to greater use of daycare and more time allocated to market work. A knock-on effect of cheaper daycare is a substantial decline in primary childcare time.

¶ My Notes

This paper lacks uncertainty and extends a relatively simple version of the competitive equilibrium. Seems like it would make a decent teaching example.