Institutions, Social Norms, and Bargaining Power:
An Analysis of Individual Leisure Time in Couple Households
Couples allocate their time with reference to a complex function of household needs
and individual abilities, preferences, and bargaining power. We examine the impact different
institutions, in particular different social welfare systems, and different social norms have on
individual’s bargaining power within a household, hypothesizing that more generous social
welfare systems and more egalitarian social norms will tend to mitigate the impact standard
power measures have upon couples’ time use decisions. Further we posit that leisure time is
likely more sensitive to power considerations than housework time which may be more
subject to gendered notions of time use as well as to preferences regarding household public
goods. We empirically investigate this hypothesis using US and Danish time diary data to
estimate OLS models of leisure time. These models include a readily available measure of
bargaining power based upon education in addition to standard controls for such factors as
age, household composition, and marital status. The US social welfare system is generally
less supportive than that observed in Denmark, which follows the more egalitarian
Scandinavian model, thus we expect relative bargaining power to have a greater impact on
individuals’ leisure time in the United States than in Denmark.
LITERATURE REVIEW
As the study of the allocation of resources, economics has a lot to say about
individuals’ allocations of time and money. Modeling household allocation decisions is
substantially more complicated. One class of models posits that when individuals unite to