Measuring Household Work: Recent Experience in the United States

Abstract There is evidence to indicate that the amount of time spent on household work in the United States is decreasing and that the division of work among household members is changing. However, involvement in household work is rarely measured in surveys, and when it is measured, there is reason to question the reliability and validity of the measures used. This paper describes the ways in which household work has been measured and compares results obtained using different approaches to data collection. Our analysis indicates that direct questions on the amount of time spent doing housework tend to overestimate the time spent when compared with time diaries. We conclude that methodologically oriented research designed to create reliable and valid measures of involvement in household work for inclusion in surveys is needed.