Household time allocation – Theoretical and empirical results from Denmark

Using data from a sample of households in 1994 we find that Danish household labour allocation choices are best described by a collective model in which decisions are made cooperatively. Individual preferences are similar but there are important differences due to the differences in educational attainment. Households can be characterized as utilitarian with a sharing rule which depends on household income and is feminist rather than egalitarian. The allocation of tasks within the family depends on both the individuals’ comparative advantage in labour markets and individual preferences for paid work as well as the intra-household distribution of income. These results do not require explicit assumptions about labour supply that are often employed in the household time allocation literature.