Parents' time, allocated for child care? : an estimation system on parents' caring activities

摘要

"In many scientific studies and political discussions the trade-off between parent's (especially mother's) market working time and time for childcare have been discussed. In several economic studies within the field of 'new home economics' the activity space does not only consist of market work and consumption (time), also home production, human capital investment, childcare and leisure have to be considered. At least due to a standard time restriction for each individual (say 168 hours a week), these activities are highly interrelated. As some activities can be substituted by market services and/ or respective activities of the partner or other persons while other activities happen to be executed jointly, these dimensions are also highly interrelated within and across households. Especially parents with small children are considered to be under higher time pressure. Is this statement empirically provable or does it 'just' reflect the transformation process following the critical event 'birth of (another) child' all young parents have to pass? Within this transformation process the usual day course, individuals have become used to and/ or partners have agreed on, has to be broken up in favour of the young child. As individuals are often not prepared to reduce obligations - market work, social engagement, home production, human capital formation, as well as recreation activities-- sleep, personal care, leisure activities - to the adequate level, time conflicts have to arise. Within last decades these obligations have risen more sharply for women. The catch-up process of women in the field of labour market participation and the required equalization in education (meanwhile in most OECD-countries a considerably higher proportion of women with high school diploma have enrolled in universities than young men do) was not compensated by higher engagement of men within home production activities. Also, changes in female labour market participation have to be considered within the context of higher separation rates (hence increased risks) and the increased frequency of single parenthood phases. Single parents are more vulnerable to both, time and budget restrictions. This article focuses on the substitutionability of main time use categories for both genders via econometric methods. At this stage, the analysis concentrates on the substitutionability of the activity 'child care'. Further research will broaden the spectrum to all five categories of main activities (market labour participation, education, home production, child care, and leisure activities)." (author's abstract)