Question

Advances in technology have been made to make household work easier. If this is true, explain why time spent in household production over the past 50 years has not drastically declined. Why was there such a difference over the past 100 years? Be sure to discuss all the effects that might contribute to the lack of responsiveness of household production time to technology.

Answer 1

Home production refers to various unpaid activities carried on, by and for the members of a household, which activities might be replaced by market goods, or paid services, if income, market conditions, and personal inclinations permit the service being delegated to someone outside the household group.

Cowan Paradox

Ruth Schwartz Cowan argued that while technological innovations may have greatly reduced the drudgery of housework, they did not decrease the time devoted to it. According to Cowan, “modern technology enabled the American housewife of 1950 to produce singlehandedly what her counterpart of 1850 needed a staff of three or four to produce: a middle-class standard of health and cleanliness for herself, her spouse, and her children. Mokyr further argues that standards of cleanliness and nutrition were increasing at the same time, so that the output of household production rose substantially. According to the data shown in Greenwood et al., most of the diffusion of electricity, running water, and appliances occurred between 1900 and 1950. According to Mokyr, it was during this time that knowledge diffusion convinced many housewives that maintaining a clean house and preparing nutritious meals could improve the health of their families.

Female time spent in home production fell only by less than three hours per week between 1920 and 1960. These trends may reflect the fact that barriers to labour market entry limited the ability of married women to reallocate time to market work. Similarly, the first generation of women to acquire labour-saving appliances likely made schooling decisions without knowledge of these new goods, which may have limited the return to paid work.