Charlene M. Kalenkoski

Parental Child Care in Single-Parent, Cohabiting, and Married-Couple Families: Time-Diary Evidence from the United Kingdom

The time that parents spend caring for their children is a topic of intense interest among researchers, policymakers, and parents themselves. Parental inputs of time are enormously valuable investments in children’s well-being and development. However, the declining prevalence of two-parent, married-couple families and the steady influx of mothers into the labor market are generally believed to have placed these investments at risk. We use time-diary data from the United Kingdom 2000 Time Use Study (UKTUS) to investigate how parents’ time spent in child care differs with their marital status and other characteristics. Unlike previous economic studies, which have analyzed alternative child-care activities but only among two-parent families (e.g., Peter Kooreman and Arie Kapteyn, 1987; Daniel Hallberg and Anders Klevmarken, 2003), we examine differences among married, cohabiting, and single-parent families. The household production model indicates that single-parent households may differ from married and cohabiting households either because there are fewer time resources or because there are fewer opportunities for economies of scale or specialization in household activities (Gary Becker, 1985). If marital relationships are more stable than cohabiting relationships, the type of union may matter.

Parental Transfers, Student Achievement, and the Labor Supply of College Students

Using nationally representative data from the NLSY97 and a simultaneous equations model, this paper analyzes the financial motivations for and the effects of employment on U.S. college students’ academic performance. The data confirm the predictions of the theoretical model that lower parental transfers and greater costs of attending college increase the number of hours students work while in school, although students are not very responsive to these financial motivations. They also provide some evidence that greater hours of work lead to lower grade point averages (GPAs).

Tobit or OLS? An Empirical Evaluation Under Different Diary Window Lengths

Time use researchers frequently debate whether it is more appropriate to fit censored regression (Tobit) models using maximum likelihood estimation or linear models using ordinary least squares (OLS) to explain individuals’ allocations of time to different activities as recorded in time-diary data. One side argues that estimation of Tobit models addresses the significant censoring (i.e., large numbers of zeros) typically found in time-diary data and that OLS estimation leads to biased and inconsistent estimates. The opposing side argues that optimization occurs over a longer period than that covered by the typical time diary, and thus that reported zeros represent measurement error rather than true non-participation in the activity, in which case OLS is preferred. We use the Australian Time Use Surveys, which record information for two consecutive diary days, to estimate censored and linear versions of a parental child care model for both 24-hour and 48-hour windows of observation in order to determine the empirical consequences of estimation technique and diary length. We find a moderate amount of measurement error when we use the 24-hour window compared to the 48-hour window, but a large number of zeros in the shorter window remain zeroes when we double the window length. Most of the qualitative conclusions we draw are similar for the two windows of observation and the two estimation methods, although there are some slight differences in the magnitudes and statistical significance of the estimates. Importantly, Tobit estimates appear to be more sensitive to window length than OLS estimates.

Right-to-Work Laws and Manufacturing Employment: The Importance of Spatial Dependence

Using 2000 decennial census data, we estimate the relationships between right-to-work (RTW) laws and employment in manufacturing and other industries. Estimates that do not account for geographically correlated omitted factors dramatically overstate the positive relationship between RTW legislation and manufacturing employment. We estimate that RTW legislation is associated with an increase in manufacturings share of private wage and salary employment of 2.12%, an estimate almost 30% lower than the estimate that does not control for these spatially correlated omitted factors. Results for other industries indicate that RTW legislation is negatively associated with employment shares in the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and mining industries and some service industries, but is positively associated with employment shares in the information and professional, scientific, management, administrative, and waste management services industries. Improperly controlling for geographic factors can lead to incorrect inferences and misinform policy.

Parent–child bargaining, parental transfers, and the post-secondary education decision

Schooling decisions are often modelled within a unitary preference framework. In this article, an alternative to the unitary preference model is proposed in which parents and child have conflicting preferences over parental transfers and the level of post-secondary schooling and participate in cooperative bargaining as a means of resolving this conflict. Comparisons of the implications of the bargaining and unitary preference models motivate tests of parental altruism and income pooling. To test these hypotheses, reduced form transfer and schooling equations are estimated using data from the High School and Beyond Surveys. The evidence suggests that the unitary preference model be rejected.

Parental Child Care in Single Parent, Cohabiting, and Married Couple Families: Time Diary Evidence from the United States and the United Kingdom

This study uses time diary data from the 2003 American Time Use Survey and the United Kingdom Time Use Survey 2000 to examine the time that single, cohabiting, and married parents devote to caring for their children. Time spent in market work, in child care as a primary activity, and in child care as a passive activity are jointly modeled using a correlated, censored regression model. Separate estimates are provided by gender, by country, and by weekend/weekday day. We find no evidence that these time allocation decisions differ for cohabiting and married parents, but there is evidence that single persons allocate time differently - as might be expected, given different household time constraints. In the U.S. single fathers spend significantly more time in primary child care on weekdays and substantially less time in passive child care on weekends than their married or cohabiting counterparts, while in the UK single fathers spend significantly more time in passive child care on weekdays. Single fathers in each country report less time at work on weekdays than their married or cohabiting counterparts. In the U.S., single mothers work more than married or cohabiting mothers on weekdays, while single mothers in the United Kingdom work less than married or cohabiting mothers on all days.

Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement

ABSTRACT Although previous research has shown that homework improves students’ academic achievement, the majority of these studies use data on students’ homework time from retrospective questionnaires, which may be less accurate than time-diary data. We use data from the combined Child Development Supplement (CDS) and the Transition to Adulthood Survey (TA) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to explore the effects of time spent on homework while attending high school on two measures of academic achievement: high school grade point averages and college attendance by age 20. We find that homework time has positive effects on academic achievement for boys.

Time to Work or Time to Play: The Effect of Student Employment on Homework, Housework, Screen Time, and Sleep

Recent research suggests that working while in high school reduces the amount of time students spend doing homework. However, an additional hour of work leads to a reduction in homework by much less than one hour, suggesting a reduction in other activities. This paper uses data from the 2003-2007 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) to investigate the effects of market work on the time students spend on homework, sleeping, household work, and screen time. Results show that an increase in paid work reduces time spent in all of these activities by 84%, with the largest effect found for screen time.

Measuring the relative productivity of multitasking to sole-tasking in household production: experimental evidence

The standard household production model does not incorporate multitasking, although time-diary data reveal that individuals regularly multitask. We incorporate multitasking into a household production model in which time spent in childcare can be sole-tasked or multitasked with another household production activity and we present the results of an experiment designed to measure the productivity parameters of this model. Because utility and productivity are intertwined and difficult to disentangle in any household production model, we vary the utility pay-offs our experimental participants receive in order to determine how our estimated productivity parameters are affected by a change in the utility parameters. Our estimates of the relative multitasking productivities indicate that, while a minute of sole-tasked time produces more of a single commodity than a minute of multitasked time, total household output increases when two outputs are produced simultaneously, hence confirming the economic motivation for multitasking.

Risky Business: Precarious Manhood and Investment Portfolio Decisions.

The precarious manhood paradigm posits that threats to masculinity are met with attempts to reassert masculinity. We investigated the precarious manhood paradigm as applied to investment risk and foreign/domestic investment decisions. We sampled 652 men online, and tested whether threats to masculinity resulted in increases in investment risk and domestic investments in a hypothetical investment portfolio decision task. Results indicated that there was a main effect of threat for investment risk, such that those in the threat condition were willing to invest more in riskier investments. There was also an interaction with general risk-taking, such that men lower in general risk-taking responded to the threat condition by increasing investment in riskier options, while men higher in general risk-taking did not. A main effect of condition did not emerge for domestic investment, but there was an interaction, such that men lower in financial knowledge responded to the threat condition by increasing domestic investments, but men higher in financial knowledge did not. These results suggest that threats to masculinity influence financial investment decisions, and suggest that person-level variables (e.g., risk-taking, knowledge) may buffer the effects of threats to masculinity.