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

Abstract

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