Division of Domestic Labour and Women s Human Capital ESRC Gender Equality Network Project 4: Gender, Time Allocation and the Wage Gap Jonathan Gershuny & Man Yee Kan Centre for Time Use Research Department of Sociology University of Oxford

Background – The Gender Wage Gap Introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 Gender wage gap has fallen but remained wide (EOC, 2001) In 1999, 18% pay gap in the UK between men and women working FT (c.f. 36% in 1973) 40% gap between female part-timers and male full-timers

Background – The Gender Wage Gap Why gender pay gap? Structure of labour market - e.g. occupational segregation & part-time jobs 62% of women working full-time and 90% of women working part-time are employed in jobs mainly done by women (e.g. Paci et al. 1995). Human capital explanation – gender difference in educational qualifications, work skills and training (e.g. Mincer & Polachek, 1974) Our project investigates the relationship between the division of domestic labour and human capital accumulation

Key hypothesis of the project A gendered division of domestic labour leads to a gender gap in wages Initial difference in human capital between partners gendered division of labour differentials in subsequent human capital formation

Project aims and focus of this presentation For testing the main hypothesis of the project: Creating a measure of human capital Calibrating time use estimates for BHPS Aims of this paper: Changes in womens and mens time use practices over the life course, and esp. since birth of first child Investigating the impacts of domestic div. of labour and on human capital accumulation

Defining human capital Human capital refers to economically salient embodied resources e.g. skills, educational attainment, and specific knowledge of the sort that might be considered by prospective employers as justifying offers of employment (Becker, 1993; Coleman, 1988) Sociological usage: estimated value of economically salient work skills – a key element of Weberian notion of class situations We use a Heckman regression model to estimate shadow wage for BHPS

Measuring human capital – Essex Score Kan & Gershuny, ISER WP Data from British Household Panel Survey –5,500 households, 10,300 individuals, in wave one – present Variables in the model: Age, age squared Dummies for education attainment MOW scores (mean occupational wage, 2 digit categories, standardised to 0-100) Work, unemployment, family care status over past 48 months Dummies for top MOW decile and deciles 7 to 9 Product of MOW dummies and age, age squared Sex in selection equation

Calibrating time use estimates I Kan & Gershuny,ISER WP British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) (1991 – 2005), containing a rich set of demographic information, employment characteristics and history and so on. Stylised questions about normal weekly hours of paid and domestic work, frequency at various leisure activities collected since the 1994 wave. Home On-line Study (HoL) (1999 – 2001) - a smaller scale study, but contains both diary-based and questionnaire-based (stylised) time use data. The survey part asked the same/similar set of stylised questions about time use as the BHPS.

Calibrating time use estimates II Pooled sample of diary and survey data from the HoL adult respondents (N = 2,265) Regress diary-based time use estimates on stylised time use estimates Identify same stylised variables in BHPS Parameter estimates from HoL used to calibrate time use estimates for BHPS data

Calibrating time use estimates III

Aims of this paper Examine changes in time use practices of married men and women over the life course, and their implications for the gender wage gap H1: Specialization in the domestic division of labour by gender increases over the lifecourse H2: The gender specialization in the dom. div of labour has negative impacts on womens human capital accumulation

Recap: Hypotheses H1: Specialization in the domestic division of labour by gender increases over the lifecourse H2: The gender specialization in the dom. div of labour has negative impacts on womens human capital accumulation

Conclusion Womens time use practices change to a greater extent than mens after lifecycle events Women become more specialized in domestic work, and mens in paid work over time Men and women have more or less the same total work (paid+unpaid domestic) But - Womens potential wage suffers because: Significant, negative relationship between proportion of domestic work on human capital

Further work Further analyses on the causal relationship between domestic division of labour and potential wage: Instrumental variable approach Models with lagged dependent variables Graphical chain models