The Effect Of Income And Education On Family Housework Time Allocation

Since the founding of New China, China has got brilliant achievements in science and technology, economic, political, cultural and other fields, especially after the reform and opening up. The living standards have improved at large; education enterprise has grown vigorously, and women's status in political, economic, cultural, and social has changed fundamentally; and then the gender gap is narrowing. So,what impacts do these great changes have on Chinese families? How may be housework tasks measuring the living condition of resident and the status of family members affected? Specifically, what effects do income and education have on housework time allocation among husband and wife, this is the core issue of this paper to discuss.Based on 2010 Chinese Family Panel Studies data, this paper firstly analyzes income statement, education level and housework time situation among couples aged at 18 to 65 years old. Based on the theory of game model, the paper adopts Tobit model and OLS model to verify the influence of husband and wife's income and education on couples'housework time and the division respectively, and then conducts some robustness tests by using Seemingly Unrelated Regression of the system equation, Instrumental Variable Method and some other methods.Statistical analyses find that the level of education in China is generally low in 2010, and education level and income gap between men and women is extremely obvious, and wives are still the main undertaker of housework. The empirical results show that personal income has a significant influence on housework time for both husband and wife, and at the same time it has the same effect on the division of housework with spouse's income. Relative income among couples has a limited bargaining power on wife's housework time, but not on husband. What's more, it can also influence significantly and continuously the division of housework among couples. Besides, income has a stronger effect on housework time and its division for husband than for wife, and in urban area than in rural area. On the whole, the effects of personal education level on couple's housework time and its division between husband and wife are insignificant, but in general spouse's education level can improves own housework time and its share because more educated partner tends to take more housework time and share. What's more, among couples that at least one partner is educated, relative education level has a U-shape relationship with husband's housework time and housework share, but it has an inverted U-shape with wife's housework share. The results of all robustness tests also support the above results in this paper.