Gender Effect on Housework Allocation: Evidence from Spanish Two-Earner Couples∗

Empirical evidence from developed countries consistently shows that working wives remain responsible for most household duties. The aim of this paper is to study the unequal distribution of housework between working spouses in Spain. Housework time allocation is modelled through a bivariate negative binomial distribution, conditional on a set of observable characteristics, such as paid labor conditions, education or the presence of children at home. We find that the probability of egalitarian housework sharing between spouses is particularly small, being greater the probability of wives bearing most of the household duties. Furthermore, these estimates are used to carry out an similar-to-Oaxaca decomposition, between observable characteristics effects and “price” effects. Our results suggest that an important part of housework allocation depends more on gender-specific effects such as the cultural context or historical view of gender housework division rather than on spouses differences in their observable characteristics.