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The major purpose of this paper is to discuss the decision of
the time allocation of small families in Taiwan. The major
differences of our study from previous ones include: (1) The
data source: Owing the lack of available data, we merge the 1987
Men Power Utilization (MPU) survey and Time Utilization (TU)
survey. (2) Econemetric methodology: We establish a two-regime
switching regression model to consider the sample selection bias
and we use the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model to
estimate the time allocation function. (3) Time-use contents: We
follow the traditional analysis and analyze the allocation of
time for market work, housework and leisure. In addition, we
apply a disaggregated analysis and consider the time use of
sleeping, TV-watching, social activities, reading, and so on.
The empirical results show that the main explanatory variables
for time allocation include the wage rate, education, living
area, age and the existence of preschool kids. All these
explanatory variables have the impacts in line with the
predictions of our theory and previous researches. An
interesting finding is that, for a wife without work, her time
utilization decision will be influenced by her husband''s traits
only. However, for a couple with the wife working, the couples''
time utilization will be influenced by each other''s traits. It
seems that a wife''s labor market participation status plays a
critical role in the determinants of bargaining power of
husbands and wives in the families.
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