The Story Behind the Post-War Decline in Women’sHousework: Prices, Income, Family Size, andTechnology Effects in a Demand System

This paper applies production theory to define a new set of inputs for U.S. households over the post-World War II period and uses newly constructed data on some of these inputs to fit a completehousehold-demand system, including inputs of women’s and men’s housework, and seven other inputgroups. The econometric results yield plausible price and income elasticities. Women’s and men’shousework are shown to be complements, rather than substitutes, but the other seven input categoriesare substitutes for women’s housework. Since the price of all inputs, except for men’s housework,has fallen significantly relative to the price of women’s time over the post-war period, substitutionaway from women’s household work is a major factor in its decline over the study period. Much ofthis decline, however, occurred from 1948 to 1980. Although the number of children under age 5 perhousehold grew from 1948 to 1960 by 25 percentage points, which tended to increase the demand forwomen’s housework, family size declined from 1960 to 1985 by 27 percentage points andcontributed to the post-60s decline in the demand for women’s housework. Also, the increasing shareof the population aged 65 and older reduced the demand for women’s housework. Thesedemographic changes are shown to have impacted women’s housework by a much larger magnitudethan men’s housework. Women’s housework is a normal good, so rising real per capita nonlaborincome in the post-war period has offset some of the above forces for decline. The parameters of thedemand system are also used to make some standard of living comparisons for the post-war period.[...]