Gender Differences Of Housework Penalty Effects On Wages

Despite wide concern,a large part of gender differences in the labor market remain unexplained.Related research often treats housework division and wage gap as separate issues in the private sector and the public sector,while discussion on wage from the perspective of housework division is relatively scarce.Housework is often associated with factors that have negative impact on labor market performances,and may influence wages more directly.Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey for the years 1989-2011,this paper examines the impact of housework on wages for both female and male married workers.Endogeneity considered,it was found that time spent on housework lowers married workers' wages significantly.Empirical results suggest that an extra hour of housework would reduce male's wages by 2.7%-6.8%.However,the results for female are less conclusive.The penalty effects are only significant in the 2SLS estimates.In response to these findings,this article further focuses on the transmission channels of the penalty,and found that the limitation of effort and time by housework is the main reason for reducing wages.The penalty effects are more pronounced when workers choose formal positions,participate in complicated housework and raise young children.In addition,domestic work may also affect wages through indirect channels such as job segregation,promotion and working conditions.Female workers may actively choose jobs that are compatible with housework,or passively accept lower wages or less potential positions because of discrimination caused by housework.In this circumstance,female wages are less sensitive to housework.Finally,this paper also analyzes the heterogeneity,and finds that the higher the housework intensity is,the more obvious the penalty is;workers in the urban area are more influenced by housework.The Oaxaca decomposition reveals that the introduction of housework significantly increased the explained part of the gender wage gap by 15.34%.Compared with previous literatures,this article is innovative in the following aspects.First,it focuses on Chinese labor market.Second,using multi-dimensional econometric models which combines 2SLS estimation,FE estimation and Heckman estimation,this paper deals with complicated endogeneity to ensure robustness.The third is to enrich transmission mechanism test and make up for the lack of existing studies.At last,the empirical results prove that housework imposes greater penalties on men's wages.By revealing the real impact of housework on the labor market in China,this article provides a new perspective for understanding gender equality,and improving labor market related policies.This article also has many deficiencies.For instance,the conduction mechanism test failed to meet expectations because of the lack of detailed time use records or labor market performance information.Therefore,comprehensive survey data in the future would contribute to further inspections of conduction mechanism.