American Economic Journal:
Microeconomics
ISSN 1945-7669 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7685 (Online)
Togetherness in the Household
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
vol. 15,
no. 1, February 2023
(pp. 529–79)
Abstract
Spending time with a spouse is a major gain from marriage. We extend the classical collective model of the household to allow for togetherness between spouses. Togetherness takes the form of joint leisure and joint care for children. Using revealed preference conditions and Dutch data over the years 2009–2012, we find that households are willing to pay €1.20 per hour—10 percent of the average wage—to convert private leisure to joint leisure and €2.10 per hour to convert private childcare to joint childcare. Our results suggest togetherness is an important component of household time use despite being over- looked in the economics literature.Citation
Cosaert, Sam, Alexandros Theloudis, and Bertrand Verheyden. 2023. "Togetherness in the Household." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 15 (1): 529–79. DOI: 10.1257/mic.20200220Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- D13 Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
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