Automation, Relative Wages, and Time Use Distortions within Households

The adoption of industrial automated technology in the US is associated with a decrease in wages, stronger for men than for women. This paper investigates how this affects households' allocation of time by constructing a measure of labor markets' exposure to industrial robots. Higher exposure is associated with a decrease in labor supply of male workers in households with no young children. However, families with children of childcare age respond by decreasing the mother's labor supply in the market, increasing her time spent on childcare and leisure, and with an added worker effect on the father's side. A structural collective household model of time use formalizes the mechanism underlying this inefficient behavior, proposing a combined effect of the shift in Pareto weights due to the decrease in the wage gap, and the identity norm regarding the undersupply of women's labor when their potential income surpasses that of the husband