Household production in a collective model: some new results

Household models estimated on labour supplies alone generally assume non-market time to be pure leisure. Previous work on collective household decision-making is extended here by taking domestic work into account in the Chiappori et al. (J Polit Econ 110(1):37–72, 2002) model. Derivatives of the household “sharing rule” can then be estimated in a similar way. Using the 1998 French Time-Use Survey, we compare estimates of labour supply functions assuming first that non-market time is pure leisure and then taking household production into account. The results are similar but more robust when household production is included. Collective rationality is rejected when domestic work is omitted.     

Longitudinal Analysis of the Domains of Satisfaction Before and After Disability: Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of the onset of disability on life satisfaction and five different domains of satisfaction (health, household income, housing, job, leisure) for German individuals. Particular attention is paid to examining whether individuals can adapt to disability over time before and after its onset in terms of satisfaction. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for the period 1984?C2008, we estimate an innovative fixed-effects model on life satisfaction and each domain of satisfaction for working-age males (aged 21?C58), which allows us to estimate lag and lead effects and thus to test the anticipation and adaptation hypotheses. Although individual obtain complete adaptation to disability in terms of global life satisfaction (5?years after the onset), this adaptation is not complete in all domains of satisfaction. For example, despite the fact that the levels of health satisfaction drop as the individual becomes disabled, after the onset it increases but the levels are lower than those reached before the onset. In contrast, the adaptation is especially faster in the terms of leisure satisfaction (3?years after the onset), household income and housing satisfaction (5?years after the onset in both cases). Our results support the findings obtained in other psychological studies that conclude that the domain of disability extends far beyond health related concerns to encompass the person??s well-being definition of self and social position. Finally, these findings may help policy makers and government to promote social and economic measures and actions lead to increase the scores of global well-being and specific domains of satisfaction of this collective.     

Physical activity patterns in healthy middle-aged women

ABSTRACT

Exercise in healthy female adults around the menopausal transition has been routinely examined in leisure activities alone, potentially discounting the physical activity (PA) that is accumulated in household and outdoor domains. The purpose of this study was to quantify PA in healthy middle-aged women and to examine the extent to which the Center for Disease Control (CDC) PA guidelines were met through leisure, household, and outdoor activities. Methods: 440 healthy women, 51–64 years old, BMI ≥18.5 or < 40 kg/m², participated in the study using the Lifetime Physical Activity Questionnaire (LPAQ) to quantify PA. Results: 25.91% met the CDC PA guidelines if leisure time alone was examined. When multiple domains were included, 73.41% of the women met the PA guidelines. This percentage is much higher than the reported 20.6% of U.S. adults who met the guidelines in 2011. PA in women may be underrepresented in data limited to leisure time PA.     

The relevance of social interactions on housing satisfaction

For most individuals, housing is the largest consumption and investment item of their lifetime and, as a result, housing satisfaction is an important component of their quality of life. The purpose of this paper then is to investigate the determinants of individual housing satisfaction as a particular domain of satisfaction with life as a whole, examining the effects of individual and household attributes (predictive), housing characteristics (hedonic), and more importantly, of social interactions originated in one's residential neighbourhood. To do so, we model housing as a composite commodity that satisfies dwelling needs, as well as other intangibles such as familiar relationships and socio-status aspects. We use the Survey of Living Conditions and Poverty (Spain). Specifically, using a self-reported measure of housing satisfaction, we estimate ordered probit models searching for the empirical specification that provides the best fit accounting for divergences driven by aspirations defined in the own household (internal norm), and by social comparisons (peer-effect or external norm).

The Relationship Between Serious Leisure Characteristics and Subjective Well-Being of Older Adult Volunteers: The Moderating Effect of Spousal Support

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between serious leisure characteristics and subjective well-being as well as clarify the moderating effect of spousal support in their relationships. A total of 264 valid questionnaires were collected from a sample of older adult volunteers in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate a model linking serious leisure, spousal support to subjective wellbeing. As expected, the results show that older adult volunteers having greater serious leisure characteristics lead to a high level of subjective well-being. The findings further revealed that spousal support moderated the effect of serious leisure characteristics on subjective well-being. This indicates that the higher the level of spousal support, the larger is the likelihood that serious leisure will lead to greater subjective well-being. The results are suggested to be useful references for the older adult volunteers while improving spousal support, in order to increase the level of well-being.     

Gender differences in physical activity and walking among older adults

Older women are generally more sedentary and less active than older men, but little is known about the specific factors underlying the differences between the genders in physical activity (PA). The purpose of this study was to compare men and women regarding their household leisure time PA, walking activity, and personal and environmental factors related to physical activity. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 276 older adults recruited from senior centers. Findings revealed that women were less active overall but more involved in household activities. The women's personal and environmental factors represented poor conditions for PA, and as a result they engaged in lower levels of PA than men.     

The Standard of Living of the Workers in a Spanish Industrial Town: Wages,Nutrition, Life Expentancy and Heigth in Alcoy (1870–1930)

This is the first study that empirically examines how migration influences migrants’ time use patterns in China, utilizing a mixed-method approach. We systematically estimate the migration effects on weekly hours on working, leisure, personal care and domestic responsibilities, based on data from the nationally representative 2010 Chinese Family Panel Studies. We then supplement these analyses with in-depth interviews conducted in Beijing to further understand the underlying mechanisms. Compared with urban locals, rural-to-urban migrants have longer work hours and less leisure time. The largest differences are found among men. On average, migrant men work 5 h longer and have 7 fewer hours of leisure per week than urban local men. These differences are moderated by migrants’ and their parents’ socioeconomic status, and their family responsibilities. The in-depth interviews reveal that the busier work schedules are largely motivated by the transient nature of most rural-to-urban migration and the overwhelming economic pressures for household establishment and career development.     

Relationships Among Adolescents’ Leisure Motivation, Leisure Involvement, and Leisure Satisfaction: A Structural Equation Model

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to test a cause-and-effect model of factors affecting leisure satisfaction among Taiwanese adolescents. A structural equation model was proposed in which the relationships among leisure motivation, leisure involvement, and leisure satisfaction were explored. The study collected data from 701 adolescent students at a junior college in central Taiwan. Participants were assessed using a questionnaire that captured leisure motivation, leisure involvement, leisure satisfaction and demographic data. The preliminary model fit criteria, overall model fit, and fit of the internal structure of model were used to assess the leisure satisfaction model fit. The results revealed that leisure motivation had no significant effect on leisure satisfaction when leisure involvement was also in the model, but leisure motivation had a significant effect on leisure involvement. Adolescents with higher leisure involvement had more positive leisure satisfaction. We found that 92.0% of the variance in adolescents’ leisure satisfaction could be explained by leisure involvement. When leisure involvement was considered in the model, no significant predictive effect on the leisure satisfaction of adolescents was found for leisure motivation. In order to enhance leisure satisfaction, it is strongly suggested that adolescents learn to be involved in leisure activities and obtain support from their family.     

The Association Between Individual Income and Remaining Life Expectancy at the Age of 65 in the Netherlands

This article quantifies the association between individual income and remaining life expectancy at the statutory retirement age (65) in the Netherlands. For this purpose, we estimate a mortality risk model using a large administrative data set that covers the 1996–2007 period. Besides age and marital status, the model includes as covariates individual and spouse’s income as well as a random individual specific effect. It thus allows for dynamic selection based on both observed and unobserved characteristics. We find that conditional on marital status, individual income is about equally strong and negatively associated with mortality risk for men and women and that spouse’s income is only weakly associated with mortality risk for women. For both men and women, we quantify remaining life expectancy at age 65 for low-income individuals as approximately 2.5 years less than that for high-income individuals.     

Do Household Heads Speak for the Household? A Research Note

Many recent household surveys include questions about respondents’ subjective well-being. Nearly all of them, however, pose these questions only to the household head. This paper addresses an issue with practical and methodological concerns. Can survey designers ask only household heads and expect them to accurately represent the living conditions of the entire household? Using South Africa’s 1998 October Household Survey (OHS) to estimate econometric models of subjective well-being, this paper finds that the response of household heads is determined largely by factors shared by the entire household – housing, for example – and not on those experienced primarily by the head – individual health status, for example. This suggests that South African household heads are truly reporting household well-being, rather than their individual level of satisfaction. While this result probably cannot be widely generalized, the testing methodology is replicable and could be applied to similarly structured data sets.     

Household commodity demand and demographics in the Netherlands: a microeconometric analysis

We investigate the effects of demographics, household expenditure and female employment on the allocation of household expenditure to consumer goods. For this purpose we estimate an Almost Ideal Demand System based on Dutch micro data. We find that interactions between household expenditure and demographics are of significant importance in explaining the allocation to consumer goods. As a consequence, consumer goods such as housing and clothing change with demographic characteristics from luxuries to necessities. Furthermore, this implies that budget and price-elasticities cannot be consistently estimated from aggregated data and that equivalence scales are not identified from budget survey data alone. We reject weak separability of consumer goods from female employment. A couple with an employed spouse has a smaller budget share for housing and personal care and a larger budget share for education, recreation and transport and clothing compared to a couple with a non-employed spouse. Received: 12 September 1997/Accepted: 27 February 1998     

Welfare analysis of a tax reform for Germany: a comparison of the unitary and collective models of household labour supply

We compare results of a tax reform analysis obtained with the collective and unitary models of household behaviour. We simulate real world micro-data by means of a collective approach, using a compound procedure of estimation and calibration based on the 1998 wave of the German socio-economic panel. We estimate a unitary model on this ‘collective’ data set. Investigating a move from joint to individual taxation on the basis of both models, we obtain important discrepancies between predicted adjustments to labour supply and distortions in the welfare analysis of the reform on the basis of unitary estimates.      

Intra-household work time synchronization

If partners derive utility from joint leisure time, it is expected that they will coordinate their work schedules in order to increase the amount of joint leisure. In order to control for differences in constraints and selection effects, this paper uses a new matching procedure, providing answers to the following questions: (1) Do partners coordinate their work schedules and does this result in work time synchronization?; (2) which partners synchronize more work hours?; and (3) is there a preference for togetherness? We find that coordination results in more synchronized work hours. The presence of children in the household is the main cause why some partners synchronize their work times less than other partners. Finally, partners coordinate their work schedules in order to have more joint leisure time, which is evidence for togetherness preferences.     

Being Under Time Pressure: The Case of Workers with Disabilities

This article examines levels of time stress reported by people with and without disabilities. Using data at an individual level from the Time Use Survey for Spain in 2002–2003, we estimate an ordered probit model to investigate the determinants of time stress by disability status. We find that disabled individuals work fewer hours, have more free time and engage in more household labour as compared to the non-disabled. The estimation results show that disabled workers (especially those who are severely or moderately limited in their daily activities) suffer from more stress than their non-disabled counterparts. In addition, longer working hours increase the levels of time stress reported by all individuals, but more intensely so among disabled workers.     

Is it Pleasure or Health from Leisure that We Benefit from Most? An Analysis of Well-Being Alternatives and Implications for Policy

International policy now constantly advocates a need for populations to engage in more physical activity to promote health and to reduce society’s health care costs. Such policy has developed guidelines on recommended levels and intensity of physical activity and implicitly equates health with well-being. It is assumed that individual, and hence social welfare will be enhanced if the activity guidelines are met. This paper challenges that claim and raises questions for public policy priorities. Using an instrumental variable analysis to value the well-being from active leisure, it is shown that the well-being experienced from active leisure that is not of a recommended intensity to generate health benefits, perhaps due to its social, recreational or fun purpose, has a higher value of well-being than active leisure that does meet the guidelines. This suggests rethinking the motivation and foundation of existing policy and perhaps a realignment of priorities towards activity that has a greater contribution to social welfare through its intrinsic fun and possibly social interaction.     

Time Cost of Children as Parents' Foregone Leisure

From the 1998–99 French Insee time use survey, the time cost of children is estimated in terms of hours of foregone leisure. The focus on couples with two spouses working full time implies no need to be concerned about substitution between home production and labor supply. The model accounts for selection into full-time employment, endogenous wages, and controls for outside help with home production and child care. The foregone leisure cost per child under the age of 3 is 1.6 hours for each parent. It is about half that size for children aged 3 to 14. Children over age 14 involve no leisure cost to parents.     

The Time-Crunch Paradox

Previous research has shown little difference in the average leisure time of men and women. This finding is a challenge to the second shift argument, which suggests that increases in female labor market hours have not been compensated by equal decreases in household labor. This paper presents time-use and leisure satisfaction data for a variety of western European countries, and shows that accounting for socio-economic factors that differ between men and women is vital for understanding gender differences. We find that working mothers have leisure levels that are much lower than those of working fathers and singles. Working mothers are also most likely to report the least satisfaction with free time. Finding that time stress and leisure time are positively correlated within socio-demographic groups suggests that the second shift argument is still valid, and that feelings of time stress are indeed associated with the lack of leisure time.     

The allocation of time and goods in household activities: A test of separability

In this paper, we test for the weak separability hypothesis imposed by the household production model between goods and time inputs used in the production of different commodities. Our data come from a French survey which reports both expenditures and time that households devote to some activities. The results allow us to show that the weak separability assumption cannot be rejected only when households are strongly time constrained. In the opposite case, home time uses are found to be nonseparable. Received: 24 November 1999/Accepted: 16 November 2000     

The decisions of Spanish youth: A cross-section study

This paper presents a simultaneous model for the joint decisions of working, studying and leaving the parental household by young people in Spain. Using cross-section data from the 1990–1991 Encuesta de Presupuestos Familiares, the model is estimated by a two stage estimation method. Endogeneity of the three decisions proves to be important in order to understand the dynamics of household formation. Our results also confirm a number of plausible intuitions about the effect of individual characteristics and economic variables on these decisions, and provide some new insights into the reasons for young people in Spain remaining in large numbers in the parental home. Most of the results are gender independent. Received: 18 September 1998/Accepted: 24 October 2000     

Income sufficiency v. poverty Results from the United States and The Netherlands

The purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of subjective measures used to assess poverty and to add to the literature on poverty measurement methodology. In particular, the paper focuses on the minimum income question (MIQ) first proposed by Goedhart and colleagues (1977). Data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey and from a Dutch newspaper survey are used. The primary contribution of the paper is the inclusion of household expenditures as additional explanatory variables of minimally necessary income. Significant differences between the coefficients of several categories of expenditures, particularly for leisure, appear to reveal differences in the interpretation of the minimum income question by respondents. Thus, we question the underlying assumption of the MIQ that everyone adheres the same welfare meaning to the phrase “minimally necessary income,” and conclude that the resulting thresholds should not be used as to measure poverty before further research has been carried out to explore what respondents are thinking when they answer questions such as the MIQ.