Research

Spending time together with a partner is a major source of gain from marriage. However, most models of household time use typically abstract from togetherness; as a result, we know very little about how households value togetherness, what benefits and costs it accrues, or how it interacts with other time uses. Addressing these points is our main goal.

We study how couples with children allocate their time across paid work, leisure, and childcare. Our distinguishing feature is togetherness: we divide the time each spouse spends on leisure and childcare to private (time spent alone) and joint (time spent together). In doing so, we admit that togetherness naturally requires spouses to synchronize their schedules so as to be physically together at the same time. We provide the first nonparametric characterization of togetherness which, among other things, allows us to recover bounds on joint childcare separately from joint leisure - both rarely observed in the data. We then quantify the value of togetherness among Dutch households, we find it substantial, and we conclude that togetherness is an important component of household time use despite it being relatively overlooked in the economics literature.

Link to paper