These short notes supplement the discussion in Greenwood, Seshadri and Yorukoglu (2004) on time-use studies and female labor-force participation.

Ananth Seshadri

Jeremy Greenwood

English

Research Papers in Economics

UNIVERSITY OF
ROCHESTER
Engines of Liberation - Additional Notes
Jeremy Greenwood and Ananth Seshadri
Working Paper No. 506
January 2004Engi nes o f Li b era t i o n — Addi t i onal
Notes
Jeremy Greenwood and Ananth Seshadri
University of Rochester and University of Wisconsin
July 2003
Abstract
These short notes supplement the discussion in Greenwood,
Seshadri and Yorukoglu (2004) on time-use studies and female
labor-force participation.
1. Time-Use Studies: The paper reports a remarkable drop in the
time spent on housework from 58 hours a week to just 18 hours over
the period 1900 to 1970 — these numbers come from Lebergott
(1993). Some social historians maintain that the time spent on
housework has remained constant. They quote an old study by
Vanek (1973, Tables 3.2, 4.14, and 4.15), who reported that the
total time spent on housework has remained constant at 26 hours
a week for an employed mother and 55.4 hours a week for a non-
employed one. Her ﬁndings have long since been questioned.
(a) As mentioned in the paper, Roberts and Rupert (1995) re-
port, using data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics,
that between 1976 and 1988 the time spent on housework
by a working wife fell signiﬁcantly from 20.2 hours per week
to 15.9. The time spent by a nonworking wife dropped very
slightly from 34.0 to 32.2 hours per week.
1(b) Likewise, in another time-use study Gershuny and Robinson
(1988) state: “The results of this U.K./U.S. cross-time com-
parison seem unequivocal, at least with respect to routine
domestic work. Contrary to conventionally accepted wisdom,
domestic work time has been declining for women” (p. 551).
They ﬁnd that between the 1960s and 1980s the time spend
on housework fell by 72 minutes a day, after controlling for
f a c t o r ss u c ha sp a i dw o r ka n dt h en u m b e ro fk i d s . 1
(c) Cain (1984) notes that there are several problems associated
with Vanek’s work. Even taking her numbers at face value,
he notes that the average time spent on housework must have
declined from 53 hours a week to 41, since the number of
working mothers (who spend less time on housework than do
non-working ones) has increased. He argues that the hours re-
ported in the 1920s sample are not directly comparable with
the sample in the 1960s, because the former is plagued by
some severe sample selection problems. Speciﬁcally, he notes
that the sample in the 1920s is not representative of all fami-
lies of interest. Nonresponse and attrition reduced the sample
by more than 50% (of the 1,200 women who were reached by
the county agents, only 513 usable records remain). This led
to an over-representation of women with higher educational
backgrounds and higher status. This would lead to an under-
estimate of the time spent in housework in the 1920s. Two
other sources of bias are also analyzed by Cain: ﬁrst, the
busiest wives are less likely to participate in the time-use sur-
1Incidentally, Robinson is the director of the time-use project at the University of
Maryland.
2veys, and second, wives with larger number of children were
underrepresented. This would lead to an underestimate of
t h et i m es p e n ti nh o u s e w o r ki nt h e1 9 2 0 s . H ep a r t i a l l yc o r -
rects for these biases and extrapolates the data back to 1890
and argues that “Over the period 1890 to 1975-76, married
women’s housework is estimated to have decreased by 41 per-
cent” (from 66 hours per week to 39 hours per week).
(d) The Lynds (1937), in their classic Middletown study, provided
a statistical account of time spent on housework in 1924. A
team of sociologists led by Caplow replicated (in 1977 and
1999) the well-known study by the Lynds in Middletown (the
original study was done in 1924) — see Caplow, Hicks and
Wattenberg (2001). In 1924, 87% of married women spent
4 or more hours doing housework each day. Zero spent less
than 1 hour a day. By 1999 it had plummeted to 14% and
33% of women spent less than 1 hour a day.
(e) The paper reported upshot of a study done by the Rural Elec-
triﬁcation Authority on the time saving nature of appliances.
A similar study was reported in Ladies’ Home Journal.H e r e
are the results:
3Estimated weekly hours saved by appliances
Task With Appliances Without Time Savings
Breakfast 7 10 3
Lunch 10.5 14 3.5
Dinner 10 12 2
Dishwashing and Clearing 10.5 15.75 5.25
Washing and Ironing 6.5 9 2.5
Sewing and Mending 3.5 4 0.5
Bed making 2.75 3.5 0.75
Cleaning and dusting 2 3 1
Total 52.75 71.25 18.5
Source: "Making Housekeeping Automatic,"
Ladies’ Home Journal, 37, September 1920.
2. Labor-Force Participation by Single Women: The paper focused on
labor-force participation by married women. Labor-force partici-
pation for single women has also increased over time — see Figure
1, where once again the data comes from Goldin (1990, Tables 2.1
and 5.1). As can been seen, historically single women have worked
more than married ones. It’s unclear how to treat single women,
though. At the turn of the last century most young single women
lived at home, until they were married. They surrendered a large
part of their earnings to the family. Today, most would live alone
and transfer little or none to their family. Therefore, how should
a single women be treated:
(a) incorporated into the family’s maximization problem;
(b) taken as solving her own problem with,
i. the decision to remain within the family unit assumed to
41880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980
0
20
40
60
Single
Married
Figure 1: Female Labor-Force Participation: 1890-1980
be exogenous,
ii. the decision to remain within the family being modelled
exogenously, say as in models of marriage and divorce?
In fact the decision of many single women and men to live alone
today may reﬂect the fact that it is much less costly in terms of
time to run a household today versus yesteryear.
References
[1] Cain, Glen G., “Women and Work: Trends in Time Spent in House-
work,” Institute for Research in Poverty Discussion Paper 747-84,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 1984.
[2] Caplow, Theodore, Louis Hicks and Ben Wattenberg, The First Mea-
sured Century, The AEI Press, Washington D.C., 2001.
5[3] Gershuny, Jonathan. and Robinson, John. P., “Historical changes in
the household division of labor,” Demography 25, 537-551, 1988.
[4] Goldin, Claudia. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic His-
tory of American Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
[5] Greenwood, Jeremy, Ananth Seshadri and Mehmet
Yorukoglu,“Engines of Li b eration," Re vi e w of Economi c St ud-
ies, 2004.
[6] Lebergott, Stanley. Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in
the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
[7] Lynd, Robert S. and Lynd, Helen Merrell, Middletown in Transition,
Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1937.
[8] Roberts, Kristen and Peter Rupert. “The Myth of the Overworked
American.” Economic Commentary,R e s e a r c hD e p a r t m e n t ,F e d e r a l
Reserve Bank of Cleveland (July 15 1995).
[9] Vanek, Joann, “Keeping Busy: Time Spent in Housework, United
States, 1920-1970,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1973.
6

Ananth Seshadri and Mehmet Yorukoglu,“Engines of Li b eration,&quot; Re vi e w of Economi c St udies,

Keeping Busy: Time Spent in Housework, United States,

Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century.

The First Measured Century, The AEI Press,

The Myth of the Overworked American.” Economic Commentary,R e s e a r c hD e p a r t m e n t ,F e d e r a l Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women.

Work: Trends in Time Spent

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