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Sponsored by MPRC, NICHD, and the Maryland Time Use Laboratory

University of Maryland

Sponsored by MPRC, NICHD, and the Maryland Time Use Laboratory

Liana Sayer starts a new Time Use Lab at the University of Maryland

Intersection of time use, family inequality, and well-being

Long Doan along with Faculty Associates Liana Sayer, Sociology, and Jessica Fish, Family Science, will examine the social impacts of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic.

Liana C. Sayer, University of Maryland, and Yue Qian, Ohio State University; 2015-006

Liana C. Sayer and Joanna R. Pepin, University of Maryland; Lynne M. Casper, University of Southern California // Keywords: time use, mother, leisure, marital status; 2015-010

This study investigates the relationship between maternal employment and state-to-state differences in childcare cost and mean school day length. Pairing state-level measures with an individual-level sample of prime working-age mothers from the American Time Use Survey (2005–2014; n = 37,993), we assess the multilevel and time-varying effects of childcare  costs  and  school  day  length  on  maternal  full-time  and  part-time  employment  and  childcare  time.  We  find  mothers’ odds of full-time employment are lower and part-time employment higher in states with expensive childcare and shorter school days. Mothers spend more time caring for children in states where childcare is more expensive and as childcare costs increase. Our results suggest that expensive childcare and short school days are important barriers to maternal employment and, for childcare costs, result in greater investments in childcare time. Politicians engaged in national debates about federal childcare policies should look to existing state childcare structures for policy guidance. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023119860277

The quantitative scholarship on domestic labor has documented the existence of a gender gap in its performance in all countries for which data are available. Only recently have researchers begun to analyze economic disparities  among  women in their time spent doing housework, and their studies have been largely limited to the U.S. We extend this line of inquiry using data from two European countries, the former West Germany and Sweden. We estimate the “economic gap” in women’s housework time, which we define as the difference between the time spent by women at the lowest and highest deciles of their own earnings. We expect this gap to be smaller in Sweden given its celebrated success at reducing both gender and income inequality. Though Swedish women do spend less time on domestic labor, however, and though there is indeed less earnings inequality among them, the economic gap in their housework is only a little smaller than among women in the former West Germany. In both places, a significant negative association between women’s individual earnings and their housework time translates into economic gaps of more than 2.5 hours per week. Moreover, in both countries, women at the highest earnings decile experience a gender gap in housework that is smaller by about 4 hours per week compared to their counterparts at the lowest decile.