Family Work Trends and Practices:1971 to 1991

Families are allocating their time in an increasingly market-oriented fashion, with a decreasing proportion of labor hours being devoted to unpaid work. This article analyzes two aspects of the changing allocation of time. First, using longitudinal data from 1971 to 1991, the nature of the changes in how the families have changed their allocation of time between market and non-market alternatives is examined. Next, how family types have changed their allocations over the same period are examined. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics is used for this analysis.Results of this research indicate that the proportion of time spent on household labor among men has increased over individual men's life cycles and between cross-sectional cohorts. However, women continue to devote more hours to household labor than men. The number of hours women spend in the labor force are increasing, but the number of hours women spend in the labor force is still less than the number of hours men spend in the labor force. While the families in the longitudinal analysis have been able to maintain fairly stable work and income patterns, the cross-sectional data indicate that families need to devote an increasing number of hours to the labor market to maintain economic stability.