Time as a Source of Inequality Within Marriage: Are Husbands More Satisfied With Time for Themselves than Wives?

Abstract

Motivated by popular discussions of the "double work day" for women in dualearner households, this paper examines gender differences among such couples in satisfaction with time for self, drawing on microdata from the 1990 Statistics Canada General Social Survey. While most earlier studies of the distribution of well-being within households focus on material goods, differences in access to free time are a potential source of inequity within the family. This paper gives some evidence that women in dual-earner households are more time-stressed than men, apparently as a result of the continued gendered division of housework, despite high levels of paid work by wives. However, total labor supply is not the main predictor of time stress for wives. Hours per week matter more than weeks per year, presumably because much household work cannot be postponed until another week.