Total Work, Gender and Social Norms in EU and US Time Use

Using time-diary data from 27 countries, we demonstrate a negative relationship between real GDP per capita and the female-male difference in total work time--the sum of work for pay and work at home. We also show that in rich non-Catholic countries on four continents men and women do the same amount of total work on average. Our survey results demonstrate that labor economists, macroeconomists, sociologists and the general public consistently believe that women perform more total work. The facts do not arise from gender differences in the price of time nor from differences in intra-family bargaining: Gender equality is not associated with marital status, and most of the variance in gender total work differences arises from within-couple differences. A theory of social norms could account for within-education group and within-region gender differences being smaller than inter-group differences. It is consistent with cross-national evidence from the World Values Surveys and various sets of microeconomic data.

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