Kimmel, Jean and Rachel Connelly. 2007. “Mothers’ Time Choices: Caregiving, Leisure, Home Production, and Paid Work.” Journal of Human Resources 42(3): 643–681.
Using data from the 2003 and 2004 American Time Use Survey, we study the role that socioeconomic factors play in mothers’ time choices. We estimate a four-equation system in which the dependent variables are the minutes used in home production, active leisure, market work, and child caregiving. Our results show that mothers’ caregiving time increases with the number of children, decreases with age of the child, and increases with the price of child care. We also find a substantial positive wage elasticity for caregiving time, while both leisure and home production time declines with increased wages.
Jean Kimmel is an associate professor of economics at Western Michigan University and Research Fellow of IZA, Bonn. Rachel Connelly is professor of economics at Bowdoin College. The authors thank the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research for financial support for this research. They also thank Dawit Senbet and Fei Tan for research assistance and Erdal Tekin, Dorinda Allard, and two anonymous reviewers for providing feedback that substantially improved the paper. Finally, they thank their children for enlightening them regarding the distinction between the process and outcome utility components of caregiving time. Earlier drafts of this manuscript were presented at the November 2005 SEA meeting, December 2005 ATUS Early Results Conference, and the January 2006 ASSA meeting. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning January 2008 through December 2010 from Rachel Connelly, Department of Economics, Bowdoin College, Brunswick ME 04011, connelly@bowdoin.edu.