A Typological Analysis of House Work in the Modern Russian Family

Abstract

Maria Malkova — PhD Student, Chair for Economic Sociology, National Research University “Higher School of Economics”. Address: 20, Myasnitskaya St., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation. E-mail: marmaha@yandex.ru

Yana Roshchina — Deputy Head, Chair for Economic Sociology, National Research University “Higher School of Economics”. Address: 20, Myasnitskaya St., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation. E-mail: yroshchina@hse.ru

This paper studies household behavior and distribution of house duties inside a household, in particular. It adopts economic and economic-sociological approaches to modeling non-market labor activities of household members. Using the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS 2006) we analyze the basic characteristics of Russian family household labor, and also discuss some specific patterns of time budget allocation between various types of housework by different social and economic groups.

We show that different types of housework are not homogeneous in many characteristics, such as: percentage of population involved in certain types of activities, the average level of time costs per activity, etc. A comparison of men and women has demonstrated that women are much more involved in housework activities than men (this pattern proves to be common across many countries, according to the literature), and, what is more, women specialize in everyday housework and childcare. The degree of participation, time costs and differences in behavioral patterns between men and women within a household are still highly affected by gender roles. Other important factors are age, family status and number of children in the family.

Although an increase in labor supply leads to a decrease in housework involvement, this substitution effect is not large enough and produces the double employment phenomenon. This tendency is observed both for women and men, but it is especially relevant for women. The more economically active a household member is and the more labor he supplies to the market, the higher are his/her time costs in the household. We can see that the hypothesis of the rational allocation of time between the labor market and housework is not supported by the data.

Cluster analysis has partitioned respondents into six groups, depending on various combinations of housekeeping and behavioral patterns within a household, as well as the differentiation of time spent on these purposes. The individual types of housework participation significantly differ by size and structure of time costs. A housewife specializes in everyday chores and spends more time at home than any other type. A master is mainly involved into periodical types of housework (such as repair work, driving etc.). A tutor spends a lot of time with childcare in addition to everyday duties. A farmer prefers to allocate his time to agriculture. Finally, a minimalist (specialized in everyday or periodical work) spends a minimum of his time on housework. Regression analysis has shown that in the households with a single adult gender, age, children’s age, and employment are the most important factors influencing the choice of housework type.

Other than the individual types, various household strategies of housework allocation were revealed using cluster analysis (in the families with more than two adults). These strategies are the following: patriarchal, minimum-egalitarian, agricultural, childcare (careful), traditional-egalitarian and daily-minimal ones. The estimation of the multinomial regression model has demonstrated that social economic parameters of households such as family type, type of residence, land ownership and car possession, employment and education of family members are significant predictors of housework allocation type. Other important factors include characteristics of the head of the family: age, gender, marriage status, frequency of alcohol use and nationality.