Date of Award

6-2019

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Younghwan Song

Keywords

labor economics, labor force, labor force participation, gender, American Time Use Survey

Abstract

The male labor force participation rate has been declining for decades, dropping from nearly 90% down to 69.3% as of now. Using survey respondent data from the 2003-2017 American Time Use Survey, this paper investigates how nonworking males choose to allocate their time in a day. This paper examines how the time allocation has changed over time for males ages 25-34 as well as for those who have less than a high school degree because these two samples shows significant changes in time allocation. For the other samples, ages 35-44 and 45-54 as well as all education levels higher than a high school degree, not much change in their time allocation was shown between males and females. This paper finds that when not participating in the labor force, males do not substitute market work with household production, but instead spend more time on leisure activities. Females who are not in the labor force instead increase their household production. Observing this trend over time, this paper finds that men contribute even less household production in 2017 than in earlier years. Focusing on leisure activities, this study finds that young and uneducated nonworking males are increasing the amount of time allocated for recreational computer use as well as for watching movies and TV.

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