{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":52,"pdf_page":60,"physical_index":60,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"24b656d525aa76871bd12046a6bfb030d7b41ec91f6f869d2c9dbf2d9fab8722"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Of course, if increasing female participation in the workforce was facilitated by a reduction in domestic work hours, made possible by the difusion of labor-saving household appliances of various sorts and by the outsourcing of domestic tasks to market service providers, then even as women increased their hours of compensated work, total hours of market and nonmarket work per household might have stayed the same or even have fallen. There is some contention about whether increasing afluence, with more widespread access to appliances such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners, led to a decrease in domestic labor. Some analysts, looking at US data, argue that there is evidence that numbers of hours of housework per week have tended to go down over time (Robinson and Godbey 1999; Zilibotti 2010). However, Ruth Cowan’s (1983) historical research suggests that the amount of time devoted by households to domestic labor did not fall significantly in response to the dissemination of supposedly time-saving consumer durables. According to Cowan, the efect of labor-saving domestic appliances was, rather, to increase standards for what counts as an acceptably clean and ordered household.21 If domestic labor did not decrease very greatly over the course of the twentieth century then, as more women entered the labor force, it is quite possible that the combined average domestic and waged labor hours per household may actually have increased in the second half of the century.\n\nComing up with precise estimates for long-term trends in combined domestic and paid work time per household is very dificult, because reliable data are hard to come by. John Robinson and Geofrey Godbey (1999), stitching together American time use surveys (ATUS) from 1954 to 2000, suggest that total household labor has declined.22 But there are problems with the representativeness of the samples used in time use surveys because of low response rates. Time use studies are also problematic because it is unclear how to classify time spent in more than one activity (Hammermesh, Frazis, and Stewart 2005).23 Also, most of the decline charted by Robinson and Godbey occurred between 1965 and 1975, with not much further movement after that period. The combination of increasing female labor force participation, along with no decisive evidence that domestic work retreated to any great degree, casts some doubt on the suggestion that total labor per household declined in the second half of the twentieth century.\n\n52\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":51,"next_page":53}