No. 179 - Time use in couples: differences between employed and self-employed workers

We study how employed and self-employed workers living as a couple differ in terms of allocation of their time. In particular, we focus on the division of domestic work between men and women. It emerges that the type of job strongly affects the allocation of time of men, whereas it is much less relevant for women. Unobservable characteristics, like preferences for work, rather than the type of job (employed vs. self-employed) seem to matter for the allocation of time of women. In general, Italian data confirm that self-employed workers work longer hours, in particular at nights and during the weekends. When we analyse together the allocation of time of both partners, we find that market and domestic work are more equally distributed within couples where the woman is self-employed. Conversely, when the man is self-employed and the woman is employed the allocation of time is distributed very unevenly. This suggests that the choice of the type of job is a channel through which the allocation of time spent on domestic work within couples is determined.