The Allocation of Time in the Household - a Theory of Marriage and Divorce.

Abstract

The household is the basic decision-making unit in our society. Economists typically view the household as a single-person decision-making unit. The husb and and the wife, however, both have preferences that must be taken into account when any decision regarding allocation of a person's time in the household is made. Since marriage is almost always a voluntary action on the part of the husb and and the wife, there must be gains (in utility) from marriage for the couple to be married. These gains from marriage are due to division of labor in the household and joint enjoyment of public activities. There are also tradeoffs in utility between the husb and and the wife. The problem facing the household is set up as a maximization problem. The utility of the wife as well as that of the husb and is maximized subject to a budget, time, existence of gains, and power condition constraint. The allocation of time and market goods in the household is assumed to be efficient. The gains from a particular marriage are shown to be greater, in theory, the more negatively related the traits of the husb and and the wife that are close substitutes in market and household production and the more similar the husb and and wife's preferences for activities that are potentially public. The data in my empirical work indicate that gains from marriage exist due to division of labor in the household and the joint enjoyment of public activities. The characteristics that influence preferences, determine productivity in the production of activities, and determine wage earning capacity may change from one time period to another. The household must then reevaluate its situation and obtain a new solution to the problem of the allocation of time in the household. When the model is extended to two time periods, marital adjustment and divorce can be incorporated into the model. Unexpected changes in characteristics that contribute to gains from marriage are shown, in theory, to be maritally destabilizing. Unexpectedly high, as well as unexpectedly low earnings or large deviations between the planned and actual number of children in the household are examples of maritally destabilizing events. The larger the gains from marriage before the unexpected event, the less likely it is to cause the marriage to end in divorce.