Institutions, Social Norms, and Bargaining Power: An Analysis of Individual Leisure Time in Couple Households

be reduced, thus influencing time allocation. Both Batalova and Cohen (2002) in cross-
section analysis and Gupta (1999) in panel analysis find different patterns of time use for
married and cohabiting couples.

Other government-regulated conditions may have a similar effect. For example, just
as divorce laws may favor one party over the other, welfare regulations may favor one parent
over the other or be more generous in one jurisdiction than in another. While no specific
controls for generosity of welfare have been incorporated in time allocation models, controls
for the type of welfare state have been found to alter the gender distribution of housework
tasks. Both Fuwa (2004) and Geist (2005) find that women perform a greater share of
housework in countries with a conservative welfare state as compared to a liberal or socio-
democratic regime. Fuwa but not Geist found significantly more gendered housework in
liberal versus socio-democratic regimes as well.

Individual ideology and social norms also influence time allocation decisions. Such
are regularly considered in the sociology literature (see for example Brines 1993) but could
also be introduced in a rational decision making model if there are costs associated with
diverging from social norms and utility associated with behaving according to individual
beliefs (as discussed briefly in Bittman et al 2003). Empirical work introducing gender
ideology at the individual level includes Greenstein (2000), Parkman (2004), and Kan (2008).
Others using cross-country data introduce this measure at both the individual and the national
level in order to distinguish between social and individual norms (Batalova and Cohen 2002,
Fuwa 2004). Of course, individual ideology is often shaped by social norms and social norms
often shape government policy. Thus, it may be difficult to disentangle the separate effects of
norms and government policy.

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