Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 27, 2026

Breakfast Habits among Schoolchildren in the City of Uruguaiana, Brazil
Published on: July 29, 2020
Unemployment in Families: The Case of Housework
Margaret Gough1, Alexandra Killewald
1Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson St., No. 2050, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 ( mmgough@umich.edu ).
Abstract:
Unemployment has consequences for individuals, but its impacts also reverberate through families. This paper examines how families adapt to unemployment in one area of life-time in housework. Using 74,881 observations from 10,390 couples in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate fixed effects models and find that individuals spend between 3 and 7 hours more per week in housework when unemployed than when employed, with corresponding decreases of 1 to 2 hours per week in the housework hours of unemployed individuals' spouses. We are the first to show that unemployment is associated both with a reallocation of housework to the unemployed spouse and an increase in the family's total household production time. The results also provide evidence for gender differences in adjustments to the division of labor during unemployment, with wives' unemployment associated with an increase in housework hours that is double the increase for unemployed husbands.
Related Concept Videos
Quantifying Work
Close Relationships and Culture
Work
Work is defined as the result of a force acting on an object, causing it to move along the line of action of force. It is also defined as the process of transferring energy through the application of force on an object, resulting in its displacement.
Work
The dot product can be expressed in terms of...
Cognitive Dissonance
Work of a Couple Moment
When the rigid body undergoes a differential displacement due to a couple, its motion can be divided into two parts: equal translation of the two points to their final...
