The impact of women's mental load on labor productivity and occupational choices. Evidence from Italy (in Italian: La percezione del carico famigliare nelle scelte professionali)

We want to examine whether mental load, i.e., the management behind household activities and the cognitive labor for assuring the well-being of all components of the household, affects cognitive abilities and labor productivity of men and women, through a lab-in-the-field experiment. The treatment consists of priming in the mind of the participants thoughts related to mental load. They will then be asked to perform an effort task for 15 minutes divided in three slots: during the first and in the second, they will have to perform a more manual task and a more cognitive demaning task, in a random order. Then, in the last slot, they will be asked to choose whether they rather perform the manual or the cognitive task, knowing that the more cognitive task will be highly payed.

2023-10-02

2023-11-30

There are three primary outcome variables of interest: performance in the tasks, self-selection into less cognitive-demanding jobs, and optimal choice of income maximization based on previous productivity levels.

Labor productivity will be measured as the performance in the exogenous (i.e., during the first 10 minutes of the effort task) and in the endogenous task (i.e., during the last 5 minutes of the effort task). Values will be standardized to be able to compare among them. Then, we will measure productivity in the manual and in the cognitive task separately. The second outcome of interest will be a dummy variable which will be equal to 1 if the participant chooses to perform the Tower of Hanoi with 4 disks, and 0 if she chooses to count zeros in the third round of the effort task. The third outcome of interest will be a dummy variable equal to 1 if the individual chooses the income maximizing option in the third round or not. Based on the productivity levels in the first two rounds, we will build the dummy variable which is equal to one if the participant makes an irrational choice, i.e., if she/he chooses for the third round to perform the task in which she/he was less productive during the first two rounds of the effort task.

Secondary outcomes will be the average number of moves needed to complete the Towers of Hanoi and the average time needed to complete each Tower. We will also look at the time needed to complete each table with zeros and ones, and the separate income of each task.

A socio-economic questionnarie and a mental load questionnaire will be administered to both participants of the treatment and control group the days before the experiment. On the day of the experiment, participants in the treatment and in the control group will be exposed to a similar set of activities, in a slightly similar order, while modifying their contents for priming the minds of treatment group participants with the thoughts related to the household. In detail, participants in the treatment group will be first exposed to a time-use diary, then to a vignette describing the main dimensions of mental load, and then they will be asked to perform an effort task. The effort task will be modified in order to continue to recall to participants their most pressing worries and thoughts related to the household. Participants in the control group, on the other hand, will have to read a neutral vignette related to the correct posture during working hours, and then they will be asked to perform the effort task, that is presented in a more neutral way. At the end, they will be asked to complete the time-use diary. The effort task will last 15 minutes. The 15 minutes will be divided into three-time slots of 5 minutes each. During the first two slots, participants will have to count the number of zeros in a table with ones and zeros, and complete as many tables as possible, as well as complete as many Towers of Hanoi as possible starting with three disks with increasing difficulty. For the last time slot, participants will have to choose whether they would rather play the Tower of Hanoi starting with an increased difficulty level (i.e., with 4 disks and up) or count zeros again.

During the effort tasks, on the screen of the treatment group will appear several post-it that remember things to do related with the household management and with the well-being of the children (the doctor's appointments, the dinner to be prepared, etc.). For the control group, the post-it that will appear will be related with the correct posture of the subject during working hours.

Randomization done from the office through phone calls.

The unit of randomization are individuals. We sample individuals with children under the age of 18, working either in the administration and in a academic position at the university of Florence (Tuscany).

No

We will sample a total of 250 individuals, divided into equal shares between women and men

250 individuals

125 individuals in the treatment group and 125 individulas in the control group.