Paid Work and Unpaid Work of Employed Married Couples

—Time Use of Husbands and Wives by Spouse's Work Hours—

Abstract

Using the 2001 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities by the Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Public Management, time allocation among employed married couples was analyzed. The interrelations between the paid and unpaid work hours of wives and those of husbands were studied through the analyses of data on time use. The results are as follows: 1) As working wives spend more time on paid work, both their unpaid work hours and free time are decreased. 2) Longer paid work hours of wives increase their husbands' time devoted to paid work. And time spent on unpaid work by husbands is affected by their wives' unpaid work hours. 3) Husbands' time devoted to unpaid work is not affected by their nonworking wives' unpaid work hours. However, the paid work hours of working husbands and the unpaid work hours of nonworking wives are related to each other.