In 2023 all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants were allowed to start grocery shopping online. This paper provides the first answer to the question: What is online shopping worth to the SNAP participant in dollars? Using meal-kit pricing and time-use data, an implicit wage rate and dollar value distribution are estimated for time saved in home food production from online grocery shopping. We report the 95th, 75th, 50th, 25th, and 5th percentile results. We simulate saving 50%, 75%, and 90% of grocery shopping time and estimate the savings per hour per meal. For example, if online shopping saved 75% of shopping time, the median saving per hour per meal would be $2.59. If a family of four made 15 to 30 meals a month, this corresponds to an implicit 5% to 11% increase in the benefits per month due to the time saved. The implicit wage rate provides simple and elegant economic insights into many aspects of food production and consumption not obtainable by just considering the money price.

The aim of this paper is to analyze gender differences in the determinants of the gap between actual and desired fertility in Spain. To this aim, we exploit the 2018 Fertility Survey (EF2018) from the Spanish Statistical Institute (INE). A binary probit model shows that gender differences in the risk (and its pattern) of not reaching the desired family size are generally more pronounced amongst parents than amongst childless adults. For women, a high level of education, a potentially unstable employment situation (as an employee in the private sector) and not living with a partner increases the risk of not having the desired number of children. For men, variables related to income instability or low monthly income cause a more pronounced differential between desired and actual parenthood than amongst women, while neither educational level nor partner status – amongst those who are already fathers – significantly influences their probability of not reaching the desired number of children.

This study investigates whether individuals engage in prosocial behavior when it requires an investment of their time, but not money. In a laboratory experiment with rigorous anonymity arrangements, senders receive their payoff at the beginning. They may then engage in a tedious task to increase the earnings of exogenously disadvantaged recipients who otherwise receive no earnings. We find that senders are willing to sacrifice time to benefit recipients. Whether or not the recipient is present in the laboratory during the working time does not alter this decision. However, in a treatment variation some senders also display antisocial behavior.

A balanced growth path that accounts for a decline in hours worked per worker approximates the evolution of today’s industrialized countries since 1870. This stylized fact is explained in an overlapping generations (OLG) model featuring two-period lived individuals equipped with per-period utility functions of the generalized log-log type proposed by Boppart and Krusell (2020) and a neoclassical production sector. Technological progress drives real wages up and expands the amount of consumption goods. The value of leisure increases, and the supply of hours worked declines. Technological progress moves a poor economy out of a regime with low wages and an inelastic supply of hours worked into a regime with high wages and a declining supply of hours worked. The balanced growth path is unique and stable. In the high wage regime, the equilibrium difference equation is available in closed form. A balanced growth path with declining hours worked may also be obtained with endogenous technological progress as in Romer (1986).

This study explores the relationship between maternal working hours and a child's emotional well-being using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Child well-being is assessed through self-reported happiness and a well-being index that includes concerns, temperament, bullying, and behaviour. Results show a positive association between maternal employment and child well-being, supported by factor analysis combining child, mother, and teacher reports. The association remains consistent across income levels and is unaffected by commuting time or cohabitation status. These findings highlight the importance of maternal employment and contextual factors in shaping child well-being.

The introduction of the 2012 Labour Code is considered ‘groundbreaking’ in industrial relations in Vietnam. However, knowledge about the effects of this law is still minimal. This study provides the first evidence of the impacts of the law on worker outcomes, disaggregated by location and migration status. The Vietnam Labour Force Survey is used as the primary dataset. Both difference-in-differences and fixed-effect models are applied in the investigation. The estimated results show a relationship between the introduction of the law and the labour supply of contracted workers in urban areas, especially long-term migrant workers. Furthermore, income for these long-term migrant contract workers was affected significantly by the introduction of the law. A link between the law and health insurance participation was also found among non-migrant contracted workers in urban areas. We also perform estimations using a short panel sample and find notable results. The study likewise reveals disadvantages of rural workers compared to urban workers in terms of earnings, and of short-term migrants compared to other workers, in terms of labour supply.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a large and immediate drop in employment among U.S. workers, along with major expansions of unemployment insurance (UI) and work from home. We use Current Population Survey and Social Security application data to study employment among older adults and their participation in disability and retirement insurance programs through the second year of the pandemic. We find ongoing improvements in employment outcomes among older workers in the labor force, along with sustained higher levels in the share no longer in the labor force during this period. Applications for Social Security disability benefits remain depressed, particularly for Supplemental Security Income. In models accounting for the expiration of expanded UI, we find some evidence that the loss of these additional financial supports resulted in an increase in disability claiming. Social Security retirement benefit claiming is approximately 3% higher during the second year of the pandemic.

This paper examines how number of siblings affects employment under the relaxation of the One-Child Policy in China. We explore the One-and-A-Half-Child Policy in 1980s and examine its long-term impact on siblings and employment. With the data from 2010–2018 China Family Panel Studies, we find that individuals tend to have a larger number of siblings and have a higher probability of working in the places where the One-and-A-Half-Child Policy was implemented earlier. Using the degree of the impact of this policy as an instrumental variable for number of siblings, we find that one more sibling would increase the likelihood of working by 9.0 percentage points and increase the likelihood of working in the non-agricultural sector by 5.1 percentage points. Females are more affected by the relaxation than males. We also discuss the major mechanisms through which siblings affect employment. We find that the care-sharing effect of siblings increases labor supply and the social network effect of siblings brings more job opportunities and increases employment. The One-and-A-Half-Child Policy improves the labor market outcomes through both the channel of sharing care and the channel of social network.

The use of part-time jobs is steadily increasing in most advanced economies. Previous literature has concluded that part-time workers suffer a wage penalty, but its magnitude varies across studies and countries. The part-time penalty is the otherwise unexplained element of the gap between full-time and part-time hourly earnings. One potential factor accounting for international differences in this penalty is the coverage of collective bargaining. This article outlines research examining wage differences between part-time and full-time male and female workers in Spain, a country with a very high level of coverage of collective agreements but very heterogeneous regional labour markets. Results are obtained using an econometric decomposition specifically adapted to matched employer–employee data. They show that intra-firm wage differentials for part- and full-time workers with the same characteristics are negligible. But results that are perhaps less expected are those based on the regional analysis – an unprecedented perspective compared with the previous literature. These results show that despite very significant differences in economies and labour markets, observed wage gaps between part-time and full-time workers in each Spanish region are also mainly explained by different endowments of individual, job and firm characteristics. Overall, our evidence highlights the over-riding role of wage setting mechanisms, specifically collective bargaining coverage, in minimising inter-regional differences in the wage penalty of part-time workers.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the nature of work, with physical distancing regulations aimed at preventing infections necessitating work-from-home (WFH) arrangements. Studies indicate that many individuals prefer working from home due to fear of contracting the virus at work. However, not all work can be performed from home. Moreover, jobs that are amenable to be performed from home generally pay more, while the ability to WFH will likely increase income inequality. Therefore, we ascertained socio-economic inequalities in ability to WFH among South African employees during the pandemic. We used data from the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, a nationally representative longitudinal survey of South Africans conducted during the pandemic. We found that the ability to WFH was pro-rich (i.e. concentrated on workers in higher socio-economic classes) in all study periods. The results were robust to the use of different ranking variables and varying the age cut-off. There was no gender difference in these inequalities. Casual employment, urban residence, being married/cohabiting, age and household size dampened the degree to which ability to WFH favoured those in higher socio-economic classes. Conversely, being non-African, living in a house/flat and having more education increased the pro-richness of the ability to WFH. This study highlights the significant inequalities associated with ability to WFH, a likely important positive determinant of welfare in the pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Interventions targeted at inequality-enhancing factors such as race, housing and education may be important in lowering these inequalities.

This article uses empirical evidence, based on labour market indicators, to analyse the factors influencing the incidence of child labour in Pakistan, from both supply and demand sides. The level of demand for child labour is shown to be linked mainly to adult wage levels, the adult unemployment rate in an area, and the size of the informal and agriculture sectors. The supply of child labour is seen to be positively linked to the proportion of adult unemployment in the household. Unlike previous studies, the article analyses both demand and supply side factors in a context of poverty and takes account of the co-existence of formal and informal labour markets. Furthermore, to generalise the issue for a longer span of time (which previous studies fail to do), it adopts the methodology of a pseudo-panel approach based on that proposed by Deaton. This approach makes it possible to pinpoint more accurately the factors, and their interaction, that need to be considered in any effective policy approach to the issue of child labour. To prevent unintended consequences, a multi-faceted development approach is required.

The absence of institutionalised childcare and education during the lockdowns, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, put parents who worked from home in a stressful situation in which they had to combine the roles of teacher, parent and employee. This study aims to analyse how the closure of kindergartens and schools during the March–May 2020 lockdown in Slovenia changed the reported allocation of time, and perceived emotional exhaustion of parents working from home, compared to nonparents. We also focus on the differences in the impacts of lockdown between genders, status of family-provision and employment sectors of parents. Using data from a survey carried out on cohabiting and married individuals in Slovenia and applying a difference-in-difference estimator, we find that parents incurred a significant increase in their unpaid work burden, reductions in time devoted to paid work and leisure and suffered an increase in emotional exhaustion. Namely, Slovenian parents reported roughly 2 h less of paid and 4 h more of unpaid work per day during the lockdown in comparison to nonparents. The analysis also demonstrates that females performed more unpaid work and enjoyed less leisure before the lockdown, but the lockdown adjustment did not further increase gender inequality.

We highlight the role of home productivity and social norms in explaining the gender gap in labor force participation (LFP), and the non-monotonic relationship of women's LFP with their education in India. We construct a model of couples’ time allocation decisions allowing for both market and home productivity to improve with own education. Incorporating individual preference to produce a minimum level of the home good due to social norms, we show that our theoretical model can closely replicate the U-shaped relationship between women's education and their labor supply. Our analysis suggests that home productivity, along with social benchmarks on couples’ time allocation to home good, can be critical determinants of women's labor supply in developing countries.

This paper analyzes the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the within-household gender gap in relation to paid work hours in full-time employed heterosexual couples in Spain. Using the Spanish Labor Force Survey (2019–2020) and a difference-in-differences method, we analyze three stages of the pandemic: strict lockdown, de-escalation, and partial closures to study the short-term effects and potential medium-term effects on gender inequality in terms of paid work hours. Our results suggest that during the strict lockdown period there was a tendency to fall back on traditional family gendered patterns to manage the work–life balance, especially when young children are present in male-headed households. However, this phenomenon seems to be a short-term consequence of the pandemic. The sector of activity (essential or non-essential) has also played a key role, the gender gap increased in male-headed households with female partners employed in non-essential sectors.

We study a parent's demand for gratitude from his child. We view this demand as an intervening variable between the parent's earnings and the incidence of child labor. The demand for gratitude arises from the desire of a parent to receive care and support from his child late in life, while the inclination of the child to provide this support during his adulthood is determined by how the child was treated by his parent during childhood. Specifically, we model the child's gratitude as an inverse function of the intensity of his labor in childhood. We show that when we keep the child's (imputed) wage constant, the intensity of child labor decreases with the parent's earnings. However, when we make the child's (imputed) wage a function of the parent's earnings, then the outcome can be different. With the help of a numerical example, we show that the pattern of child labor related to the parent's earnings can be U-shaped.

This paper uses Socio-Economic Surveys covering the period from 2013 to 2019 and the 2015 Time Use Survey to investigate the extent to which household consumption changes at retirement in Thailand. A fuzzy regression discontinuity design is applied to evaluate the retirement effect on total household expenditure and expenditures on four major categories: food-at-home, work-related items, non-durable entertainment, and others. The results reveal that retirement decreases household expenditure by 11%. Further investigations show that the dramatic declines in expenditures on work-related and non-durable entertainment contribute significantly to the spending drop at retirement. The magnitudes of the declines are more pronounced for low-income and low-wealth households. The results also indicate that the retirees spend more leisure time on home production activities after retirement. Once accounting for this effect, it finds that the drop in total household expenditure decreases to 6%. These results suggest that the sizable consumption expenditure drop at retirement is due to substituting away from market purchased goods toward home-produced goods.

Tolerance of sexual minorities is presumed to matter, but its effects are under-studied. Because tolerance can affect both experiences at work and division of labor in the household, we study the relationship between tolerance and the time cohabiting gay men and lesbian women spend in paid work across the United States. In the average state, the increase in tolerance between 2003 and 2015 is associated with an increase in paid work of about 1 week per year among cohabiting gay men. Though not robustly statistically significant, the increase in tolerance is associated with a decrease in paid work among cohabiting lesbian women relative to heterosexual women.

Using detailed spending and time use data from the Netherlands, this paper analyzes the causal effect of retirement on spending and time use decisions. Both total consumption and disaggregated consumption categories are considered. We do not find empirical evidence for drops in households' total non-durable spending at retirement. Our estimates suggest increases in spending at retirement on goods that are complementary to leisure, but no decreases in spending on goods that are replaceable by home production. The quantitative implication of our empirical results for the Life-Cycle Model is an intertemporal elasticity of substitution for leisure below unity.

This paper contributes to the migration literature studying the time devoted to educational activities. It uses US time-diary surveys to study the allocation of time to informal as well as formal learning and educational activities by immigrants and natives. We develop a simple theoretical framework, which highlights the different constraints/opportunity costs faced by immigrants as compared with natives. Consistently with our theoretical model, the estimates show that immigrants are more likely to engage in informal and formal education and conditional on participation, they allocate more time to these activities. We find that the main drivers are economic incentives, mostly in the early phase of working life, and that the differences between natives and immigrants persist across generations. We also find that differences between immigrants and natives are generally larger in informal education than in formal education. The investment in informal and formal learning and educational activities is likely to boost immigrants' human and social capital and contribute to their socio-economic integration.

Well-functioning factor markets play an important role in improving the performance of the agricultural sector. Our paper examines both technical and allocative efficiencies at the household level, with an application to a cross-section sample of rural households in three provinces of China in 2009. In a first step, we use nonparametric methods to estimate household efficiency. In a second step, we examine econometrically the role of land rental market and its linkages with household-level efficiencies. We find that participation in the land rental market does not affect technical efficiency but has large positive effects on allocative efficiency. This stresses the need to distinguish between technical efficiency and allocative efficiency in the analysis of land tenure issues. The improvements in allocative efficiency from land-leasing contribute to significant increases in household income in rural China.