Intra-household time allocation, bargaining power and social identity norms

The main question we study is how intra-household time allocation is linked to bargaining power and social identity norms. Specifically, we intend to combine elicited survey responses on these dimensions with a theoretical model to investigate the strength of the social identity norms in explaining the observed allocation of time towards domestic and market work within couples. One of the main parts of the survey is to elicit the strength of social identity norms by asking respondents to think about how hypothetical scenarios involving other's time allocation could affect their own decisions.

2025-10-09

2025-10-31

The main outcome variables will be related to the intra-household allocation of chores. Household chores will be measured as time with children, garden work, buying groceries, cleaning and other domestic work tasks. In relation to this, we will ask questions related to the flexibility of market work. We will also ask respondents to think about other households similar to themselves and estimate how large a share of domestic chores men/women do in similar households. We will also ask respondents about their expenditures on outsourcing domestic chores, such as window cleaning etc.
We will also try to elicit the intra-household bargaining power, and how that has evolved since the beginning of the relationship.
Finally, we will ask about relationship satisfaction to correlate this with the other elicited measures of household decision making.

Bargaining power will be measured on a scale from 0-100 where 0 is “no influence” and 100 is “full influence” in household decisions.

Secondary analyses will investigate how couples’ perceived time allocations are mis-aligned within the household. We will also investigate how time allocations, social identity norms and bargaining power is potentially linked to flexible work arrangements. Finally, we will link rich register data going many ears back to study how past experiences, such as partnership duration, is linked to the main outcomes of the study.

There are two conditions and respondents will be assigned to one of the two. Both are hypothetical scenarios, as we will make very clear to the respondents. In one scenario, the respondent is asked to imagine that others of the same gender as themselves, in a household similar to the one they live in, perform 10 percentage points (pp) more of the household chores than what they previously replied that they believe they do. In the other condition, we ask them to imagine that the group do 10pp less than they imagined. The respondents will then be asked to state if and how they would imagine their own time allocation would be affected if this was true.

Not available

Randomization is done automatically by QuestionPro, the online survey platform used herein.

individuals

No

We will invite 50,000 individuals who is registered as not living with a partner, using Statistics Denmark's definition. We will also invite 150,000 individuals who are registered as having a partner. In turn, 75,000 couples will be invited.

It is voluntary to participate but we expect a response rate around 10% and thus a sample of around 20,000 individuals. Assuming response rates of members of couples are roughly independent, we hope to have responses from around 750 couples.

We will invite 50,000 individuals who is registered as not living with a partner, using Statistics Denmark's definition. We will also invite 150,000 individuals who is registered as having a partner. Each respondent has a 50-50 change of being included in either of the two treatment arms.