Housework, Fixed Effects, and Wages of Married Workers

Although the primacy of household responsibilities in determining gender differences in labor market outcomes is universally recognized, there has been little investigation of the direct effect of housework on wages. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, cross-sectional wage regressions reveal a substantial negative relation between wages and housework for wives, which persists in specifications controlling for individual fixed effects. The evidence for husbands is inconclusive. Married women's housework time is, on average, three times that of married men's. The addition of housework time to the wage equations increases the explained component of the gender wage gap from 27-30 percent to 38 percent.