Education and Household Labor in Urban Areas of Iran

Introduction: Education is considered one of the most important factors influencing population changes, which affects family patterns through cultural changes, increased opportunity costs or a heightened negotiating power. However, the role of education in household division of labor has not been studied at the national level in Iran. In order to fill the existing research gap, this paper examines the association between household labor and spouses’ education. Three main questions are addressed: (1) Is participation in household labor associated with one’s educational attainment? (2) Is participation in household labor associated with the spouse’s educational attainment? (3) To what extent the cultural and economic approaches can be used to explain the association between household labor and spouses’ education?
Method: This paper uses data from the 2014-2015 Time Use Survey, representing urban areas of Iran. The survey includes information about socio-economic and demographic characteristics of household members and the time that members aged 15 years or higher spend on different activities. The sample includes 11756 households in which both a wife and a husband reside (including 23512 spouses). Multivariate analysis is conducted using the Tobit regression models, which adjust for censored values or times equal to zero hours in this study.
Findings: Women spend on average 5 hours more daily time on household labor than their husbands, suggesting a persistent gender division of roles within family. The findings also show that wives’ higher education reduces their participation in household labor but increases their husbands’ participation in household labor. In addition, there is a positive association between husbands’ education and their as well as their wives’ participation in household labor. Therefore, wives’ experience can be explained by economic approaches but that of husbands is consistent with cultural explanations. It seems that wives’ higher education increases opportunity costs of household labor by creating the opportunity of participating in non-household activities or is used as a source for negotiating a lower share of household labor for wives as opposed to husbands.
Conclusion: This paper provided more insight about the role of education in family patterns by documenting gender differences in the association between household labor and spouses’ education and examining inter-spousal influences. Considering the variety of activities categorized under household labor, separate analyses for subcategories can contribute to the existing knowledge and help evidenced-based policy making in population and family areas.