Education and the Allocation of Time of Married Women in Iran

In the past two decades Iranian women have become much better educated and reduced their childbearing by more than two thirds, but their participation in market work has hardly increased. Economic theory and historical experience suggest that women’s education increases their market work because it increases the value of their time in the market relative to leisure or home production. In Iran, the low level of labor force participation of educated women has become a serious policy issue putting pressure on the government to limit women’s attendance at subsidized public universities, on grounds that women do not use their education productively. In this paper we examine new data from a time-use survey of urban households in 2009 to show how education affects the time use of married women in urban Iran. Our results indicate that in Iran productivity of women’s education is realized in the market as well as at home, in investment in children. Educated women spend more time in the market and in educating their children, two activities that are considered productive and good for economic growth. The time saved appears to be mainly at the expense of domestic work.