TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hamermesh,Daniel S.
TI  - Togetherness: Spouses' Synchronous Leisure, and the Impact of Children
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7455
PY  - 2000
Y2  - January 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7455
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7455.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Daniel S. Hamermesh
Department of Economics
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712-1173
Tel: 512/475-8526
Fax: 512/471-3510
E-Mail: hamermes@eco.utexas.edu
AB  - This study goes beyond the immense literature on the quantity of labor that households supply to examine the timing of their labor/leisure choices.  Using two-year panels from the United States in the 1970s it demonstrates that couples prefer to consume leisure simultaneously:  Synchronization is greater than random male-female pairing would predict. In the 1970s the demand for joint leisure among working couples was more responsive to increases in wives' earnings than to husbands', but by the 1990s the responses were identical. Couples react to changes in constraints on them by altering their schedules to preserve joint leisure, and those with higher full incomes consume more of their leisure jointly. Children reduce the jointness of spouses' leisure, with the greatest change in schedules occurring among new mothers.
ER  -