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  3. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
  4. February 2023
  5. Togetherness in the Household

Togetherness in the Household

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Abstract

Spending time with a spouse is a major gain from marriage. We extend the classical collective model of the household to allow for togetherness between spouses. Togetherness takes the form of joint leisure and joint care for children. Using revealed preference conditions and Dutch data over the years 2009–2012, we find that households are willing to pay €1.20 per hour—10 percent of the average wage—to convert private leisure to joint leisure and €2.10 per hour to convert private childcare to joint childcare. Our results suggest togetherness is an important component of household time use despite being over- looked in the economics literature.

Citation

Cosaert, Sam, Alexandros Theloudis, and Bertrand Verheyden. 2023. "Togetherness in the Household." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 15 (1): 529-79. DOI: 10.1257/mic.20200220

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
  • D13 Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
  • J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
  • J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
  • J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
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