The household model suggests that each person should allocate an additional hour to home work as long as its value exceeds the monetary value received from an hour of work at a paying job. Why, it is believed that there is a greater division between married people and single people in the labor market.
Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the average single, never married person and the family unit of husband and wife is the presence of children. One important reason for the division of labor in a married couple is because the presence of children substantially increases the value of an hour of time spent at home work relative to market work. Children particularly preschoolers require substantial amounts of time for caring, feeding and training and thus an hour of time devoted to home work will increase the individual and family’s well-being by more on average than the same hour devoted to home work by a single person.
The second aspect of the time allocation decision for a married couple is to choose the combination of husband’s time and wife’s time to allocate to home work. Traditionally the husband specialized in market work and the wife specialized in home work. The household model suggests that this decision reflected first the higher wage rate the husband could earn from an hour of market work relative to the wife and second the greater actual or perceived productivity of the wife at various home tasks particularly child care. Thus marriage causes a more pronounced difference in male and female labor force participation because on one hand marriage leads to activities (for example bearing and raising children) that enhance the value of time spent at home work while at the same time allowing a degree of specialization in market and non market work unavailable to the single person.
No comments:
Post a Comment