Abstract
We use time-diary data from the 2003 and 2004 American Time Use Surveys and the 2000 United Kingdom Time Use Study to estimate the effect of family structure on the time mothers and fathers spend on primary and passive child care and on market work, using a system of correlated Tobit equations. Our results indicate that estimates are sensitive to the inclusion of a common household factor that controls for selection into family type. Estimates from the selection-controlled models indicate that single parents in both countries spend more time in child care than married or cohabiting parents, perhaps in part to compensate for the missing parent, but that there is no difference in the time allocation of married and cohabiting parents. There are substantial cross-country differences, however, as single parents in the U.S. work more than other parents and single parents in the U.K. work less.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
About 11% of children lived with cohabiting parents and 24% lived with single parents in the U.K. in 2004 (www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1163). In 2000 less than 6% of children in the U.S. lived with cohabiting parents and somewhat less than 28% lived with single parents (www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/censr-14.pdf).
In 2005 about 75% of employed mothers in the U.S. were working full-time (www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.t05.htm), as compared with about half of all women in the U.K. (www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1654).
Policy reforms have been implemented in both countries since these data were collected. The 2006 Deficit Reduction Act, which reauthorized TANF, further increased the work orientation in the U.S. system. Meanwhile, the British government is aiming for 70% employment by lone parents by 2010.
An advantage of The UKTUS over the ATUS is that all intrahousehold relationships are identified. Thus, it is possible to ‘fix’ misreported relations using other information in the sample and to accurately identify all children of cohabiting partners. In this respect, the UKTUS sample will be ‘cleaner’ than the ATUS sample. However, a comparison of the UKTUS sample used here with another constructed using the same restrictions imposed upon the ATUS reveals only minor differences. Most notably, less than 40 households with unrelated children and only 1 adult (who might reasonably be considered the legal guardian) are excluded from our UKTUS sample but would be included under ATUS sample rules.
Diaries containing fewer than five different activity codes and those missing more than one hour of information are excluded from both the ATUS and the UKTUS diary samples.
An age cutoff of 14 is introduced here because the UKTUS does not provide sufficient detail when recording who else is present during an activity to identify children aged 15–17.
Data availability poses another problem. Wage information is only available for a subset of employed persons and household income is but imperfectly measured.
The system of equations was estimated using the aML software. Estimation of the time use equations actually proceeded using ordered probit models with known thresholds (60 min intervals) as aML was unable to estimate the Tobit specification with family structure equations using a discretely distributed unobserved factor.
As an example of how factor-analytic covariance restrictions can identify a model, consider a simple specification with a single outcome variable, y, and two endogenous explanatory variables, x 1 and x 2. Assume that x 1 and x 2 each depend on a common unobserved random component (factor), μ, and independent random components, ɛ1 and ɛ2, such that x 1 = μ + ɛ1 and x 2 = μ + ɛ2. The outcome variable, y, depends on the two observed explanatory variables, the common random component, and its own independent random component, η, such that y = β1 x 1 + β2 x 2 + μ + η where β1 and β2 are coefficients. For simplicity, assume that all of the random components are continuously distributed with zero means, constant variances, and no mutual correlations so that \(\hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{1}) = \hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{2}) = \hbox{E}(\eta) = \hbox{E}(\mu) = 0\), \(\hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{1}^{2})=\sigma_{1}^{2}\), \(\hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{2}^{2})=\sigma_{2}^{2}\), \(\hbox{E}(\eta^{2})=\sigma_{\eta}^{2}\), \(\hbox{E}(\mu^{2})= \sigma_{\mu}^{2}\), and \(\hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{1} \varepsilon_{2}) = \hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{1}\eta) = \hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{2}\eta) = \hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{1}\mu) = \hbox{E}(\varepsilon_{2}\mu) = \hbox{E}(\eta\mu) = 0\). There are six parameters in this system, and the covariance matrix for y, x 1 and x 2 has six elements. Let s 2 y , s 21 and s 22 denote the sample variances, and let s y1, s y2 and s 12 denote the sample covariances. Method of Moments estimators for β1 and β2 are \(\hat{{\beta}}_1 =\frac{\left({s_{y1} -s_{12} } \right)s_2^2 -\left({s_{y2} -s_{12} } \right)s_{12} }{s_1^2 s_2^2 -s_{12} }\) and \(\hat{{\beta}}_2 =\frac{\left({s_{y2} -s_{12} } \right)s_1^2 -\left({s_{y1} -s_{12} } \right)s_{12} }{s_1^2 s_2^2 -s_{12} },\) which are identified even though there are no variable exclusion restrictions.
Note, however, that we do find significant differences between married and cohabiting parents in the U.S. when the common factor is not included. This finding underscores the importance of controlling for selection into family type.
Ideally we would distinguish between own, step, and foster children. Such a distinction is, however, not possible with the U.S. data and likely not feasible in either case due to small populations. Only 4.5% of all children in the U.K. sample are not ‘own’.
U.S. statistics come from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.t05.htm; U.K. statistics come from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1655.
References
Aldous, Joan, Mulligan, Gail, & Thoroddur, Bjarnason. (1998). Fathering over time: What makes the difference? Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 809–820.
Barlow, Anne, & Probert, Rebecca. (2004). Regulating marriage and cohabitation: Changing family values and policies in Europe and North America—an introductory critique. Law & Policy, 26, 1–11.
Becker, Gary. (1965). A theory of the allocation of time. Economic Journal, 75, 493–517.
Becker, Gary. (1985). Human capital, effort, and the sexual division of labor. Journal of Labor Economics, 3, S33-S58.
Berk, Sarah. (1985). The gender factory: The apportionment of work in American households. New York: Plenum.
Bianchi, Suzanne. (2000). Maternal employment and time with children: Dramatic change or surprising continuity? Demography, 37, 401–414.
Bianchi, Suzanne, Milkie, Melissa, Sayer, Liana, & Robinson, John (2000). Is anyone doing the housework? Trends in the gender division of household labor. Social Forces, 79, 191–228.
Bryant, W. Keith, & Zick, Cathleen. (1996). An examination of parent–child shared time. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 227–237.
Ferree, Myra. (1990). Beyond separate spheres: Feminism and family research. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 52, 866–884.
Folbre, Nancy, Yoon, Jayoung, Finnoff, Kade, & Fuligni, Allison Sidle. (2005). By what measure? Family time devoted to children in the United States. Demography, 42, 373–390.
Gershuny, Jonathan, & Robinson, John. (1988). Historical changes in the household division of labor. Demography, 24, 537–552.
Grossbard-Shechtman Amyra. (1984). A theory of time in markets for labour and marriage. Economic Journal, 94, 863–882.
Hallberg, Daniel, & Klevmarken, Anders. (2003). Time for children: A study of parent’s time allocation. Journal of Population Economics, 16, 205–226.
Hotz V. Joseph, Klerman, Jacob, & Willis, Robert. (1997). The economics of fertility in developed countries. In Mark Rosenzweig & Oded Stark (Eds.), Handbook of population and family economics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Juster, F. Thomas, & Stafford, Frank. (1985). Time, goods, and well-being. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
Juster, F. Thomas, & Stafford, Frank. (1991). The allocation of time: Empirical findings, behavioral models, and problems of measurement. Journal of Economic Literature, 29, 471–522.
Kalenkoski, Charlene M., Ribar, David C., & Stratton, Leslie S. (2005). Parental child care in single parent, cohabiting, and married couple families: Time diary evidence from the United Kingdom. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 95, 194–198.
Kimmel, Jean, & Connelly, Rachel. (Forthcoming 2007). “Mothers’ time choices: Caregiving, leisure, home production, and paid work.” Journal of Human Resources.
Kooreman, Peter, & Kapteyn, Arie. (1987). A disaggregated analysis of the allocation of time within the household. Journal of Political Economy, 95, 223–249.
Mroz, Thomas. (1999). Discrete factor approximations in simultaneous equation models: Estimating the impact of a dummy endogenous variable on a continuous outcome. Journal of Econometrics, 92, 233–274.
Muller, Chandra. (1995). Maternal employment, parent involvement, and mathematics achievement among adolescents. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 85–100.
Nock, Steven, & Kingston, Paul. (1988). Time with children: The impact of couples’ work-time commitments. Social Forces, 67, 59–85.
Robinson, John. (1985). The validity and reliability of diaries versus alternative time use measures. In F. Thomas Juster & Frank Stafford (Eds.), Time, goods, and well-being. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
Robinson, John. (2002). The time-diary method: Structure and uses.” In W. Pentland, A. Harvey, M. Powell Lawton, & M. A. McColl (Eds.), Time use research in the social sciences. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Sandberg, John, & Hofferth, Sandra. (2001). “Changes in children’s time with parents, U.S. 1981–1997.” PSC Research Report #01–475.
Seltzer, Judith. (2004). Cohabitation in the United States and Britain: Demography, kinship, and the future. Journal of the Marriage and Family, 66, 921–928.
Smeeding, Timothy, Rainwater, Lee, & Burtless, Gary. (2001). “U.S. poverty in a cross-national context.” In Sheldon Danziger & Robert Haveman (Eds.), Understanding poverty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
South, Scott, & Spitze, Glenna. (1994). Housework in marital and nonmarital households. American Sociological Review, 59, 327–347.
Walker, Robert, & Wiseman, Michael (Eds.). (2003). The welfare we want? The British challenge for American reform. Bristol, U.K.: Policy Press.
Weiss Yoram. (1997). “The formation and dissolution of families: Why marry? Who marries whom? And what happens upon divorce.” In Mark Rosenzweig & Oded Stark (Eds.), Handbook of population and family economics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
West, Candace, & Zimmerman, Don. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1, 125–151.
Willis, Robert, & Michael, Robert. (1994). Innovation in family formation: Evidence on cohabitation in the United States. In John Ermisch and Neohiro Ogawa (Eds.), The family, the market and the state in ageing societies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendices
Appendix A: Sample statistics
Appendix B: Remaining coefficient estimates from correlated Tobit models of time-use
Appendix C: Family structure equations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kalenkoski, C.M., Ribar, D.C. & Stratton, L.S. The effect of family structure on parents’ child care time in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rev Econ Household 5, 353–384 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-007-9017-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-007-9017-y