Abstract
One aspect of marital matching is whether individuals marry within their own race/ethnicity (homogamy) or intermarry. This chapter examines black/white intermarriage in light of a model based on an analysis of markets for Work-In-Household (WiHo) presented in Chaps. 2 and 3. Evidence of discrimination against blacks in such marriage markets is uncovered from an empirical analysis of American data for the years 2003-2009. It is found that white women married to black men devote 0.4 fewer hours per day to chores than their counterparts in all-white marriages, which is comparable to the effect of a child on their hours of chores. Furthermore, white men work less at housework when in couple with black women than when in all-white couples. These findings are consistent with markets for WiHo establishing lower prices of WiHo supplied by blacks than by whites. Conversely, blacks appear to do more chores if they are in couple with whites than when in all-black couples. Results are mostly for weekdays, not weekends, which is to be expected if underlying these results are differences in the price of Work-In-Household and on weekends home production is less likely to be considered as a chore. That our results are stronger for married than unmarried couples indicates that exchanges of WiHo for money are more likely to occur among married couples. Racial intermarriage differentials in hours of household work seem to be more prevalent among the U.S.-born than the foreign-born, possibly indicating less marriage market discrimination against foreign-born blacks.
This chapter is adapted from “Racial Intermarriage and Household Production,” forthcoming, Review of Behavioral Economics.
The original version of the chapter was revised: Co-author names are included in Chaps. 7, 9, 11, and table of contents. The erratum to this chapter is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1623-4_12.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This assumption could be relaxed. Our predictions are reinforced to the extent that white women married to black men also have higher ability to translate a given share of gain from marriage into less time in chores. The intermarriage differential in time spent on chores will then be larger than the differential \({{y}_{BW}}-{{y}_{WW}}\). If the opposite is the case and white women married to black men are less able to translate a given price of WiHo into less time in chores this will weaken the prediction. It will only invalidate the prediction if white women are considerably less able to bargain about chores if married to blacks than if married to whites and the racial intermarriage differential in ability to translate an intermarriage differential in share from gain in marriage into less time in chores is large relative to \({{y}_{BW}}-{{y}_{WW}}\).
- 3.
Hamermesh (2007) finds a negative relationship between income and time allocated to household production.
- 4.
- 5.
The REG3 command in STATA is used for the estimations. To allow for clustering at the state level, and the computation of the disturbance correlation matrix, we use the SUEST command, which yields results identical to those obtained with the REG3 command.
- 6.
Alternative estimates using predicted wages for respondents and their spouses yield similar results (available upon request).
- 7.
The nine regions defined in the GSS data are: New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island), Middle Atlantic (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania), East North Central (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio), West North Central (Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas), South Atlantic (Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, District of Columbia), East South Central (Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi), West South Central (Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas), Mountain (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico) and Pacific (Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii).
- 8.
We thank Aki Matsui from the University of Tokyo for this idea.
References
Aguiar, M., and E. Hurst. 2007. Measuring trends in leisure: The allocation of time over five decades. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122:969–1007.
Altonji, J. G., and R. Blank. 1999. Race and gender in the labor market. In Handbook of labor economics, ed. O. Ashenfelter and D. Card, 3C vol, 3143–3260. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Arrow, K. J. 1998. What has economics to say about racial discrimination? Journal of Economic Perspectives 12:91–100.
Becker, G. S. 1957. The economics of discrimination. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Becker, G. S. 1965. A theory of the allocation of time. Economic Journal 75:493–515.
Bergmann, B. 1971. The effects on white income of discrimination in employment. Journal of Political Economy 79:294–313.
Bianchi, S. M. 2000. Maternal employment and time with children: Dramatic change or surprising continuity. Demography 37:401–414.
Bittman, M., P. England, L. Sayer, N. Folbre, and G. Matheson. 2003. When does gender trump money? Bargaining and time in household work. American Journal of Sociology 109:186–214.
Blackwell, D. L., and D. T. Lichter. 2000. Mate selection among married and cohabiting couples. Journal of Family Issues 21:275–302.
Bloemen, H., and E. Stancanelli. 2014. Market hours, household work, child care, and wage rates of partners: An empirical analysis. Review of the Economics of the Household 12:51–81.
Bloemen, H., S. Pasqua, and E. Stancanelli. 2010. An empirical analysis of the time allocation of Italian couples: Are Italian men irresponsive? Review of Economics of the Household 8:345–369.
Bruze, G. 2011. Marriage choices of movie stars: Does spouse’s education matter? Journal of Human Capital 5:1–28.
Burda, M., D. Hamermesh, and P. Weil. 2008. The distribution of total work in the U.S.A. and EU. In Working hours and job sharing in the EU and USA: Are Americans crazy? Are Europeans lazy? ed. T. Boeri, M. C. Burda and F. Kramarz. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burke, M. 2008. Colorism. In International encyclopedia of the social sciences, ed. W. Darity Jr., 2 vol. Detroit: Thomson Gale.
Charles, K. K., and J. Guryan. 2008. Prejudice and wages: An empirical assessment of Becker’s the economics of discrimination. Journal of Political Economy 116:773–890.
Chiswick, B. R., and C. Houseworth. 2011. Ethnic intermarriage among immigrants: Human capital and assortative mating. Review of Economics of the Household 9:149–180.
Cohen, P. N. 1998. Replacing housework in the service economy. Gender and Society 12:219–232.
Connelly, R., and J. Kimmel. 2007. Determinants of mothers’ time choices in the United States: Caregiving, leisure, home production, and paid work. Journal of Human Resources 42:643–681.
Connelly, R., and J. Kimmel. 2009. Spousal influences on parents’ non-market time choices. Review of Economics of the Household 7:361–394.
Crowder, K. D., and S. E. Tolnay. 2000. A new marriage squeeze for black women: The role of racial intermarriage by black men. Journal of Marriage and Family 62:792–807.
Darity, W. A., J. Dietrich, and D. K. Guilkey. 2001. Persistent advantage or disadvantage? Evidence in support of the intergenerational drag hypothesis. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 60:435–470.
Foster, G., and C. Kalenkoski. 2013. Tobit or OLS? An empirical evaluation under different diary window lengths. Applied Economics 45:2994–3010.
Frazis, H., and J. Stewart. 2012. How to think about time-use data: What inferences can we make about long- and short-run time use from time use diaries? Annals of Economics and Statistics 105/106:231–245.
Friedberg, L., and A. Webb. 2006. The chore wars: Household bargaining and leisure time. The Selected Works of Anthony Webb. http://works.bepress.com/anthony_webb/subject_areas.html.
Fryer, R. G. Jr. 2007. Guess who’s coming to dinner? Trends in interracial marriages over the 20th century. Journal of Economic Perspectives 21 (1): 71–90.
Gershuny, J. 2012. Too many zeros: A method for estimating long-term time-use from short diaries. Annals of Economics and Statistics 105/106:247–270.
Gershuny, J. I., and J. P. Robinson. 1988. Historical changes in the household division of labor. Demography 25:537–552.
Goldsmith, A., D. Hamilton, and W. Darity Jr. 2007. From dark to light: Skin color and wages among African Americans. Journal of Human Resources 42:701–738.
Grossbard-Shechtman, Amyra. 1984. A theory of allocation of time in markets for labor and marriage. Economic Journal 94:863–882.
Grossbard-Shechtman, Shoshana. 1993. On the economics of marriage. Boulder: Westview Press.
Grossbard-Shechtman, S. A., and X. Fu. 2002. Women’s labor force participation and status exchange in intermarriage: An empirical study in Hawaii. Journal of Bioeconomics 4 (3): 241–268.
Grossbard-Shechtman, A. S., and S. Neuman. 1988. Women’s labor supply and marital choice. Journal of Political Economy 96:1294–1302.
Hamermesh, Dan. 1990. Shirking or productive schmoozing: Wages and the allocation of time at work. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 43:121S–133S.
Hamermesh, Dan. 2002. Timing, togetherness and time windfalls. Journal of Population Economics 15:601–623.
Hamermesh, Dan. 2007. Time to eat: Household production under increasing income inequality. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 89:852–863.
Hamermesh, D., H. Frazis, and J. Stewart. 2005. Data watch: The American time use survey. Journal of Economic Perspectives 19:221–232.
Hamilton, D., A. Goldsmith, and W. A. Darity Jr. 2009. Shedding ‘light’ on marriage: The influence of skin shade on marriage of black females. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 72:30–50.
Hersch, Joni. 2009. Home production and wages: Evidence from the American time use survey. Review of Economics of the Household 7:159–178.
Hersch, J., and L. S. Stratton. 2002. Housework and wages. Journal of Human Resources 37:217–229.
Hitsch, G. J., A. Hortaçsu, and D. Ariely. 2010. What makes you click?—Mate preferences and matching outcomes in online dating. Quantitative Marketing and Economics 8:393–427.
Jenkins, S. P., and L. Osberg. 2005. Nobody to play with? The implications of leisure coordination. In The economics of time use, ed. D. S. Hamermesh and G. A. Pfann, Chap. 5, 113–145. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
John, D., and B. A. Shelton. 1997. The production of gender among black and white women and men: The case of household labor. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 36:171–193.
Juster, F. T., and F. P. Stafford. 1985. Time, goods, and well-being. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research.
Kahneman, D., and A. B. Krueger. 2006. Developments in the measurement of subjective well-being. Journal of Economic Perspectives 20:3–24.
Kahneman, D., A. B. Krueger, D. Schkade, N. Schwarz, and A. Stone. 2004. A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: The day reconstruction method. Science 306:1776–1780.
Kalenkoski, C., D. Ribar, and L. S. Stratton. 2005. Parental child care in single-parent, cohabiting, and married couples families: Time-diary evidence from the United Kingdom. American Economic Review 95:194–198.
Kalenkoski, C., D. Ribar, and L. S. Stratton. 2007. The effect of family structure on parents’ child care time in the United States and the United Kingdom. Review of Economics of the Household 5:353–384.
Kalmijn, Matthijs. 1993. Trends in black/white intermarriage. Social Forces 72:119–146.
Lafortune, J., P.-A. Chiappori, M. Iyigun, and Y. Weiss. 2012. Changing the rules midway: The impact of granting alimony rights on existing and newly-formed partnerships. Working Paper 424, Instituto de Economia, Universidad Catolica de Chile (March).
Meng, X., and R. G. Gregory. 2005. Intermarriage and the economic assimilation of immigrants. Journal of Labor Economics 23:135–174.
Meng, X., and D. Meurs. 2009. Intermarriage, language, and economic assimilation process: A case study of France. International Journal of Manpower 30:127–144.
Nottmeyer, O. 2011. Couple’s relative labor supply in intermarriage. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5567, March.
Reid, Margaret. 1934. The economics of household production. London: Wiley.
Robinson, J. P., and G. Godbey. 1997. Time for life: The surprising ways Americans use their time. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press.
Sandberg, J. F., and S. L. Hofferth. 2001. Changes in children’s time with parents: United States, 1981–1997. Demography 38:423–436.
Sayer, L. C., and L. Fine. 2011. Racial-ethnic differences in US married women’s and men’s housework. Social Indicators Research 101:259–265.
Semyonov, M., D. R. Hoyt, and R. I. Scott. 1984. Place, race and differential occupational opportunities. Demography 21:259–270.
Sevilla-Sanz, A., J. I. Gimenez-Nadal, and C. Fernandez. 2010. Gender roles and the division of unpaid work in Spanish households. Feminist Economics 16 (4): 137–184
Sevilla-Sanz, A., J. I. Gimenez-Nadal, and J. Gershuny. 2012. Leisure inequality in the United States: 1965–2003. Demography 49:939–964.
Smith, J. P., and F. R. Welch. 1989. Black economic progress after Myrdal. Journal of Economic Literature 27:519–564.
Spanier, G. B., and P. C. Glick. 1980. Mate selection differentials between whites and blacks in the United States. Social Forces 58:707–725.
Stancanelli, E., and L. Stratton. 2014. Her time, his time, or the maid’s time: An analysis of the demand for domestic housework. Economica. 81:445–467.
Tobin, James. 1958. Estimation of relationships for limited dependent variables. Econometrica 26:24–36.
Wright, R., M. Ellis, and S. Holloway. 2013. Gender and the neighborhood location of mixed-race couples. Demography 50:393–420.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix
Appendix
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grossbard, S., Gimenez-Nadal, J.I., Molina, J.A. (2015). Household Production and Racial Intermarriage. In: The Marriage Motive: A Price Theory of Marriage. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1623-4_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1623-4_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-1622-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-1623-4
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsEconomics and Finance (R0)