Women’s Earnings and Spending on Household Services, 1980-2010

• In Event: 384 - Section on Economic Sociology Paper Session. Social Economies of Households

Abstract

This article examines spending on services that replace domestic labor, commonly referred to as domestic outsourcing. Outsourcing has often been proposed as way that women might translate increased labor force participation into less time spent in housework. Thus, some research expects that outsourcing has increased substantially as women’s incomes have increased. This article uses nationally representative data to show that spending on housekeeping remained at similar levels after the late 1980s, spending on eating out and convenient foods increased only slightly from 1980 to 2010, and, for child care, spending on daycare replaced babysitting. These results cast doubt on the idea that increased outsourcing replaced household labor. Descriptive and regression analyses show that for most of these services, explanations that emphasize women’s resources, which they might use in bargaining or to purchase services for themselves, do poorly at explaining outsourcing. Instead, these data show the importance of wives’ education and suggest the role of tastes in predicting outsourcing patterns.

Author

• Sabino Kornrich, Emory University