Husbands’ Housework Time: Does Wives’ Paid Employment Make a Difference?

In this paper, we investigate the effect of a woman’s decision to enter paid employment on their husband’s contribution to domestic work. To explore this issue, we analyze cross-sectional data on Spanish couples. Our results suggest that this decision to participate in the labor market increases husbands’ housework time. However, these estimates may be subject to an omitted variable bias due to the correlation between unobservable variables, e.g., social norms, determining both decisions. Once we take into account this endogeneity problem, we find a larger impact of the wife’s labor status on the husband’s contribution to housework.