Individual and Household Time Allocation: Market Work, Household Work, and Parental Time

Since the seminal work of MINCER [1962] and BECKER [1965], the interest for the study of individual and household time allocation has been on the rise. In this introduction, we provide a brief, impressionistic survey of this large and rapidly growing literature and then discuss the organization of this volume. In particular, our aim is to provide some background references for those non familiar with this literature as well as some more general framework for the studies collected in this volume. We have organized the papers in this volume into four parts. Part I addresses the timing of market work, including its effect on wage rates and health outcomes. Part II considers household production technology, including its implications for marriage formation. Part III examines issues related to children, including child care and the intergenerational transmission of healthy behavior. Finally, Part IV deals with methodological issues, focusing on the quality of time diary data and on the treatment of reported zeros. The papers in this volume investigate a wide range of time use topics, ranging from methodological issues involving the quality of time diary data, to the timing of market work and its productivity effects, to models of household production and marriage, to child care and child development. Reading these papers, one is struck by the importance for social science research and for public policy of collecting and analyzing time use data.