Volume 37, Number 1 (Winter) 2002
Hersch, Joni, and Leslie S. Stratton. 2002. "Housework and Wages." Journal of Human Resources 37(1): 217-229.
Gender differences in labor market outcomes are often attributed to gender differences in household responsibilities, and substantial empirical evidence documents the direct negative impact of housework time on wages, particularly for married women. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that housework has a negative effect on wages regardless of marital status. Furthermore, this relation is strongest for housework tasks such as cooking and cleaning that constitute a daily routine. Because women spend substantially more time on housework, con- trolling for housework time increases the explained component of the gender wage gap by 14 percentage points.
Joni Hersch is a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and Leslie Stratton is an associate professor of economics at Virginia Commonwealth University. Joni Hersch acknowledges with gratitude research support from the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School, and helpful comments from Benjamin Hatch. Leslie Stratton gratefully acknowledges support from the 1999 VCU School of Business Faculty Excellence Fund. The data used in this article can be obtained May 2002 through April 2005 from Leslie Stratton at Department of Economics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 23284-4000.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X