CONSUMPTION AND TIME USE OVER THE LIFE CYCLE

We incorporate home production in a dynamic general equilibrium model of consumption and savings with illiquid housing and a collateralized borrowing constraint. The calibrated model explains life‐cycle patterns of households' time use and consumption of different categories documented from the microdata. It predicts that the interaction of the labor efficiency profile and the home production technology explains households' time use. The resulting income profiles, the endogenous borrowing constraint, and home production account for the initial hump in consumption. The complementarity of home hours, home input, and housing in home production drives the consumption profiles later in the life cycle.