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Author ORCID Identifier

N/A

AccessType

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Economics

Year Degree Awarded

2014

Month Degree Awarded

February

First Advisor

Nancy Folbre

Second Advisor

Fidan Ana Kurtulus

Third Advisor

Marta Murray-Close

Fourth Advisor

Sanjiv Gupta

Subject Categories

Labor Economics

Abstract

These essays focus on improving both the measurement and valuation of time devoted to family care, as well as exploring factors, such as gender, age, and earnings, that affect time allocation. The first essay examines whether time devoted to primary child care activities can be truly understood to represent the total amount of time devoted to child care (as is implied by the focus on primary care activities that dominates the time-use literature), exploring problems of conventional definitions of child care and utilizations of time-use surveys. The second essay explores the measurement issues of relative temporal burden on “sandwich” family caregivers by comparing time spent on child care and adult care. Re-categorizing activities of caring for adults and children in the ATUS in terms of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) allows for greater comparability with studies that measure needs based on assistance with these activities. Building on the improved measures of care time developed in the first two essays, the third essay develops a household production satellite account, highlighting the importance of the value of supervisory or “on-call” time and various specialists’ wages, the ratio of caregivers to care recipients (“intensity” of care), the educational attainment of caregivers.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/6029600.0

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