The influence of work time adjustment on joint activities and the demand for child care

Van Klaveren, Chris; Maassen van den Brink, Henriette and Van Praag, Bernard (2006): The influence of work time adjustment on joint activities and the demand for child care. Unpublished.

Abstract

In this paper we examine if partners in households coordinate their working times. Also we examine how this coordination influences the (in)formal demand for child care and the time spent on joint activities. The activities that we distinguish are the time that partners spent together, spent jointly on household tasks and spent jointly on child care.

We find that partners de-synchronize their work times when there are children present in the household while they synchronize their work times when there are no children present in the household. Households where women are higher educated tend to synchronize there work times.

Partners who synchronize their work times spent more joint hours on household tasks. Partners who de-synchronize their work times less spent more time together. We do not find a relation between work timing and the time that parents spent together caring for their children.

The demand for (in)formal child care is affected by the coordination of work schedules by partners. Partners who de-synchronize their work times more, demand less (in)formal child care. Moreover, active work time desynchronization and the demand for child care appear to be substitutes.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Institution: University of Amsterdam
• Language: English
• Keywords: Time Allocation; Work Timing; Work Hours; Leisure Time
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D13 - Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Time Allocation, Work Behavior, and Employment Determination and Creation; Human Capital; Retirement > J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

References

Halberg, D. (2003), `Synchronous leisure, jointness and household labor supply', Labor Economics 10(2), 185-203. Hamermesh, D. (1996), `The timing of work time: evidence from the us and germany', Konjunkturpolitik 42, 1-22. Hamermesh, D. (2000), `Togetherness: Spouses' synchronous leisure, and the impact of children', NBER Working Paper (7455). Hamermesh, D. (2002), `Timing, togetherness and time windfalls', Journal of Population Economics 15, 601-632. Jenkins, S. P. & L. Osberg (2005), "Nobody to play with? The implications of leisure coordination", Chapter 5, in Hamermesh and Pfann (eds), The economics of time use, contributions to economic analysis, Vol. 271, Elsevier, pp. 113-145. Rubin, D. (1979), `Using multivariate matched sampling and regressionadjustment to control bias in observational studie', Journal of the American Statistical Association 74(366), 318-328. Sullivan, O. (1996), `Time co-ordination, the domestic division of labour and affect relations: Time-use and the enjoyment of activities within couples', Sociology 30(1), 79-100. van Klaveren, C.P.B.J. & H. Maassen van den Brink (2007), `Intra-household Work Time Synchronization: Togetherness or Material Benefits?', Social Indicators Research - forthcoming . van Velzen, S. (2001), `Synchronizing rhythms of work and leisure; an analysis of the timing of market work, household work, and leisure of dual-earner couples in the netherlands', Third essay in Supplements to the Economics of Household Behavior, Doctoral Dissertation 242 (242), 97-127. Tinbergen Institute Research Series, University of Amsterdam,.