Trading off money for free time
within households.
A gendered analysis of
cooperative conflicts.
Jerome De Henau
San Francisco, January 03, 2009
Motivation
•
Inequality within households is a crucial yet underresearched issue in understanding the persistence of gender
and other inequalities in well-being, capabilities and life
chances
• Implementation of Sen’s framework of cooperative conflicts
(1990)
 Cooperation to increase household resources
 Conflict over division of resources between hh members
• Entitlement to household resources: legitimate command
over current and future material resources (to pursue one’s
own goals and expand set of capabilities)
• Understanding the role of perceptions (gendered factors)
2
Underlying assumptions
• Time and money are substitutes
• Entitlements are potential access to resources in time and money,
– not observable  use individual answers to questions on
satisfaction with household income and amount of leisure
time (from British Household Panel Survey 1996-2005)
– Satisfaction with time and money are positively correlated
• Partners’ satisfaction with time and money may differ because:
– Different personality / individual invariant characteristics
– Different perceptions of costs and benefits (use of
resources)
– Different entitlements (access to resources)
3
Method
• Sample: British Household Panel Survey: male-female couples
of working age (1996-2005, except 2001)
• Fixed-effect estimations (control for time-invariant unobserved
heterogeneity such as personality traits), treating satisfaction
score as a cardinal variable (Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters
2004)
• Triple objective:
– Examine effects on sum and difference of satisfaction
scores (resp. between-hh and within-hh entitlements)
– Decompose effects of individual variables on each into
symmetric (non-gendered) and gendered components
– Compare results for income and time satisfaction
4
Variables
• Our model includes
– Log of annual real gross household income,
– Source of income (investment, benefit, transfers)
– Home ownership
– Number and age of children (0-4, 5-11, 12+)
– Earning more than 75% of total earnings
– Potential earnings (Essex score): log of estimated hourly wage
– employment status (ref. full-time): part-time, inactive,
unemployed, disabled
– Subjective health
– Hours of housework
Controlling for:
– Partners’ overall score of satisfaction with life
5
– Years
Symmetric and gendered effects
On cooperative aspects of
entitlements
Household
characteristics
Non-gendered
effect
Individual
characteristics
Gendered effect
On conflictual aspects of
entitlements
Shared views (children
net cost on common
resources)
Difference in views (children
more the woman’s burden)
Employment of either
partner increases
(decreases) access to
income (leisure) for both
Employment of either partner
(relative to other) increases
(decreases) their individual
satisfaction (rel. to other)
Man’s employment
contributes more to
increase hh resources
than woman’s
Man’s employment empowers
him more than woman’s
employment empowers her
6
Results for Satisfaction with hh income
On cooperative aspects of
entitlements (sum of Satis.)
Household
characteristics
Non-gendered
effect
Individual
characteristics
Gendered effect
On conflictual aspects of
entitlements (diff. in Satis.)
Income and assets (+)
Children 0-4 (-)
Children 0-4 (+ man / - woman)
Earnings inequality (+)
Potential wage (+)
Full-time employment (+)
Housework (-)
Potential wage (+)
Full-time employment (+)
Housework (-)
Earnings inequality (- man Earnings inequality (- man / +
/ + woman)
woman)
Non employment (- man /
+ woman)
7
Results for Satisfaction with leisure time
Household
characteristics
Non-gendered
effect
Individual
characteristics
Gendered effect
On cooperative aspects of
entitlements (sum of Satis.)
On conflictual aspects of
entitlements (diff. in Satis.)
Income and assets (+)
Children 0-4 and 5-11 (-)
Children 0-4 (+ man / - woman)
Earnings inequality (+)
Potential wage (+)
Full-time employment (-)
Housework (-)
Earnings inequality (+)
Potential wage (+)
Full-time employment (-)
Housework (+)
Earnings inequality
Non employment
Step children (+ man /
woman
Earnings inequality (- man / +
woman)
Non employment (- man / +
woman)
8
Housework (+ man / - woman)
Comparison
• Main similarities across domains:
– Young children depress both leisure and income, and more so
for women (through effect is much stronger for leisure than for
income)
– Earnings inequality empowers more the woman in both
income and leisure entitlements (Bargaining power? Specific
constraints of low income households?)
• Main differences across domains:
– Income less important to leisure
– Employment and housework opposite effects
– Women more satisfied if non employment in hh than men, but
less if more housework ( contradiction), no such result for
income entitlement. More forced leisure for men than for
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women
Discussion
• Results show persistent gender roles (man’s employment more
important, children more woman’s sphere)
• Conflictual views are quite important (in both domains) 
household is not unitary, neither egalitarian (fairness of allocation
of time and resources differ between partners)
• Contrasting effects on both domains (is satisfaction with each
domain good proxy for entitlements to resources, which would
improve capabilities?)
– Satisfaction with use of leisure follows similar pattern than
satisfaction with amount of leisure time
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Discussion (2)
• Policy implications?
– If objective is subjective well-being, how to combine
contradicting effects of employment on leisure and income
satisfaction? What is the priority?
Leisure satisfaction less important to overall satisfaction
than income satisfaction (not true for use of leisure).
 But we don’t know to what extent subjective well-being is to
be pursued (Sen’s and Nussbaum’s critique)
– If objective is expansion of capabilities, how to deal with
contradicting effects of unemployment on each domain
– If objective is gender equality, careful to balance allocation
without reinforcing gender roles?
 perhaps, looking at policies that would help transform
gender roles and perceptions (equal pay, paternity leave, 11
shorter full-time working hours for both)