Family Strategies for Meeting Care and Domestic Work Needs: Evidence From Spain

By “housework” we refer to unpaid work in the home, which includes unpaid domestic work (ironing, washing, cleaning, and so on) and unpaid care work (taking care of children, caring for the sick or elderly, and so on).

The fertility rate in Spain declined steadily (falling from 2.8 in 1975 to 1.16 in 1998) to the point that it was one of the lowest in the world. Recently, it has recovered slightly (1.45 in 2008), reflecting the higher rate of fertility among a growing immigrant population (Instituto de la Mujer Citation2009).

The analysis should, perhaps, also examine whether the public provision of care work has changed substantively, but doing so would go well beyond the scope of a single study.

For further discussion on these limitations, see Nancy Folbre and Michael Bittman (2004).

See Table 2 for the household types considered.

The proportion of same-sex couples within the total sample is too small for conducting statistical analysis.

Also see Theodore Greenstein Citation2000; Michael Bittman, Paula England, Nancy Folbre, Liana Sayer, and George Matheson 2003; Jongsoog Kim and Lydia Zepeda 2004; Allen Parkman Citation2004; Sanjiv Gupta Citation2006, Citation2007; Sanjiv Gupta and Michael Ash 2008.

In Amartya Sen (Citation1987), the outcome of cooperative conflict is a function of well-being levels at the breakdown points, perceived interest, and perceived contributions. Well-being levels and the breakdown point refers to how much worse off one will be when cooperation breaks down. The perceived interest response suggests that if people attach less value to their well-being, they will give way to other family members' well-being rather than securing their own. The perceived contributions response suggests that when people are perceived as making a larger contribution to the family, the bargaining solution will be more favorable to them.

When the location is not mentioned, it means that the applied studies refer to the United States.

We identified the two principal household members on the basis of their ages and parenthood status with respect to other household members.

“Average time” is the average number of hours spent on the activity each week by the entire population (whether or not the individual actually reported the activity).

In Spain, as in other southern European countries, the traditional role of women is still dominant. Adult women are expected to provide for most of the care needs of the household.

We include this analysis at this juncture because in the third part of this study, we restrict our empirical model to couples only.

Women's labor market participation is even lower (17.4 percent) among households without children under age 18. However, here we cannot ignore the generational change, with older women having largely ascribed to a traditional-family model and assumed the role of housewife.

Disaggregating each household type, including households comprising couples with children and other dependents and male single-parent households, by income provides us with samples that are too small for conducting statistical analysis. Samples of single-person households, couples without children, and female single-parent households are only statistically significant at certain income levels.

The TUS does not include this information.

In Spain, as in other southern European countries, one of the key features of the welfare state is the low level of social expenditure devoted directly to the category of family and children in both cash and in-kind services. Childcare for children under age 3 is more limited precisely because it falls into the domain of social services and not the education system. Currently, Spain's public nurseries can provide places for just 17 percent of children under age 3. The average price of a private nursery is [euro]300 a month. The average annual net wage in Spain in 2006 was [euro]20,396 and the mode (the most common wage) was [euro]12,878, and women earned 29 percent less than men. Some low-income households receive a public grant to apply for private nurseries. The distribution between public and private nursery schools for children under age 3 is 42 percent in the public sector and 58 percent in the private sector (INE 2009a; MEC 2009a).

A “luxury good” is a good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises, in contrast to a “necessity good,” for which demand increases less than proportionally as income rises.

Nancy Folbre (Citation2008) shows that in the US total expenditure per child rises as income rises.

In Spain, 38 percent of grandmothers over age 65 with young grandchildren act as regular caretakers (Cabré Citation2007).

To avoid multicollinearity, we have not introduced a dummy variable into the models for each ordinal qualitative variable. In all instances, we have rejected the first category of response (corresponding to the lowest level; see Table 4).

In the descriptive results, we noted that principal women spend more time on housework (an intercept of 289,090 for women versus 106,220 for men).

Folbre (Citation2008) reports similar results for the US and claims that women reduce their leisure time.

In no-wage households, neither the principal man nor the principal woman earns a wage; but they have other kinds of income, such as pensions.

It might be the case that some women during their working lives have devoted less time to paid work in order to dedicate more time to housework. In such instances, this greater dedication to housework would reduce their income. Unfortunately, we do not have the information to study these situations.