Who does the housework?

Earlier this year two researchers, Dr. Kristen Myers and Ilana Demantas, completed a study of the housework roles of unemployed men. Dementas interviewed twenty out of work men, and found that they were likely to have increased their housework responsibilities substantially during their period of unemployment. While Dementas' work may reflect changing gender roles and responsibilities, the sample size on the study is small.

Moreover, despite substantial gains in gender equity (including the fact that women's educational attainment is now at parity with men's) there remains a sharp and continuing disparity in unpaid household labor when analyzed in aggregate at the national level.

Sources: 2010 American Time Use Survey, author's calculations

While 84 percent of women do some form of housework on a typical day, only 67 percent of men do, according to 2010 statistics (from the American Time Use Survey).

Across the population, women do, on average, 50-70 percent more housework than men, before childcare is counted. In childcare, the differences are even more dramatic. Women perform twice as much childcare related work as men, on average.

The 2010 results are consistent with findings from prior years in American Time Use Survey.