Choosing between his time and her time? Paid and unpaid work of Danish couples

In terms of paid and unpaid work, Danish men and women work the same number of hours per week. But while men do most paid work, women do most unpaid work. We investigate the interaction between paid work and unpaid work for Danish working couples, using the 2001 Danish Time Use Survey. We test several competing theories regarding the intra-individual and intra-household allocation of paid and unpaid work: comparative advantage, bargaining, assortative mating and ‘doing gender’. In addition, we divide unpaid work into ordinary housework and childcare and analyse whether these two activities interact differently with paid work hours. In general, the results favour the assortative mating and ‘doing gender’ theories, but do not support the bargaining or comparative advantage theories. Furthermore, results clearly show that housework and childcare are separate activities with different interaction effects.Labour supply, paid and unpaid work, intra-household allocation of time

Medium-term consequences of low birth weight on health and behavioral deficits – is there a catch-up effect?

A number of studies have documented negative long term effects of low birth weight. Yet, not much is known about the dynamics of the process leading to adverse health and educational outcomes in the long-run. While some studies find effects of the same size at both school age and young adulthood, others find a diminishing negative effect over time due to a catching-up process. The purpose of this paper is to try to resolve this puzzle by analyzing the medium term consequences of low birth weight measured as various child outcomes at ages 6 months, 3, 7 and 11, using data from the Danish Longitudinal Survey of Children. Observing the same children at different points in time allows us to chart the evolution of health and behavioral deficits among children born with low birth weight and helps inform the nature and timing of interventionslow birth weight; medium term effects; health and behavioral outcomes; longitudinal child-mother survey

Non-response in a survey among immigrants in Denmark

"The purpose of this paper is to analyse the character of response bias in a Danish survey among native Danes and immigrants from Turkey, Iran and Pakistan and thus enable the tailoring of future surveys to particular immigrants groups. The authors find that both contact rates and cooperation rates are lower for immigrants, leading to a significantly lower overall response rate. They also find important differences between groups - immigrants from Pakistan are especially difficult to reach, while refusals are particularly high among those from Turkey. Language is likewise important as a very large share of women could not be interviewed in Danish. The authors analyse not only the determinants of the probability of contact and the probability of cooperation but also the determinants of overall nonresponse, by looking at individual characteristics and observable interviewer characteristics. They find that the characteristics of the sample persons are important for both contact and cooperation rates, with different factors affecting each. Yet none of the observable interviewer characteristics appear to affect the response rate. Furthermore, after controlling for all the other variables, they find that the lower probability of response among immigrants compared to native Danes persists. The analysis clearly points to the need for tailoring surveys directed to immigrant groups to avoid response bias." (author's abstract

Educational Attainment in Denmark: The role of parents' education and childhood living conditions

We consider the importance of parental education and childhood living conditions on children's educational attainment in Denmark. Data are two surveys of living conditions merged with register data and children included are children of interviewees' aged 25 - 35 in 1998. We estimate educational attainment by applying multinomial logit models, both with and without living condition variables. Parents' education is found to be very important, and especially regarding mother's education. Thus, having a bettereducated mother is more important for the educational attainment than having a bettereducated father. Introducing living conditions in the model decreases the importance of parents' education, but only marginally. Dividing the sample into sons and daughters, an asymmetry is found. Generally, mothers matter most for their daughters, while fathers matter most for their sons. In addition, sons and daughters are affected by different living condition variables