Posted on 16. Sep, 2004 by Brian Reid in General
Government demographers have rolled out the results of a bold new effort to catalog the American life. The data from the first-ever time-use studies by the Department of Labor are now available. This is a grand step forward in the ability to measure how days are spent in this country and will be a trove of information. Eventually.
The problem with a first-ever data set such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ effort is that there is nothing to compare it to, no historical baseline to check to see if we’re doing better (or worse) than we were a year or two or ten before.
The main finding of the research — at least according to the BLS’s press release and the early New York Times account — is that there remains a gap between caregiving done by men and done by women, with women working about and hour and a three-quarters a day caregiving, while men clock in at 50 minutes. Household tasks are similarly disproportionate. The Times notes that the study “does confirm that the old divisions of labor between men and women at least partly remain.”
In a way, it’s too bad that the message from this data dump will be that men continue to lag women in caregiving, a finding that no one, frankly, finds surprising. The impressive trend in other time-use studies that do have some historical context (namely work from the University of Maryland) is that men’s contribution to household activities has more than doubled since the 1960s. Sure, we’re lagging women, but we’re closing the gap. The BLS data can’t show that. I don’t mean to suggest that the work they’ve done thus far isn’t worthy of comment, but I’d be very cautious about making sweeping conclusions based on this snapshot.
(Thanks to Christine at Ms. musings for the tip.)
G.
16. Sep, 2004
I’ve been too busy logging my 7.1 hours of childcare to try to untangle these numbers, but the NYT article made it sound as though the BLS had run comparisons on stay-home mothers vs. work-outside-the-home mothers -
I turn to you to ask if there were numbers for (cough cough) another parental childcare option and if there was any way to see if stay-home dads had an impact on the housework or sleep numbers of working spouses/partners in comparison to a mom & dad work outside the home model.
In other words: Am I of more benefit to my spouse than other options? Leaving aside the tomato-corn chowder I make that she likes so much.
I guess questions like these are why we have econ and public policy grad students.
amy
17. Sep, 2004
I haven’t read the Times story yet, so maybe my question’s answered there — which parents spend fewer than 3h/day taking care of their kids, or taking care of parents who are ill enough to require caregivers?
amy
17. Sep, 2004
Oh, my God. I just looked at the actual survey on the BLS website. It’s very sci-fi. I don’t know how anyone could have filled it out with anything resembling accuracy. My favorite subcategory, btw, is “stanching blood flow.” As in “How many minutes have you spent this week stanching blood flow?”
I notice “prying choking-size objects out of household toddlers’ hands” doesn’t make the list.
Elizabeth
17. Sep, 2004
That kind of breakdown isn’t in what was released this week, but it might be possible once Census releases the public-use version of the data set. Looking at the questionnaire, it seems that they do have questions about whether other people in the household are employed, so you could identify working mothers with non-employed spouses. I’m not sure the sample size is large enough to make reliable estimates, though.
(And rD, I really was planning on looking at this before I saw that you had talked about it.)
Elizabeth
17. Sep, 2004
They don’t actually ask you about the previous week, which no one could do with accuracy. They ask about the previous day (having warned you in advance), and talk you through the day — “ok, what time did you get up? What did you do? You got ready for work, ok, what does that mean? Did you shower? Did you get dressed? Did you get anyone else dressed? How long did that take? Who was with you while you did this?” And then they code what people say into the categories in the survey. So, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.