Basic Income and Wives’ and Husbands’ Housework Time: Evidence from South Korea

This article examines the effects of basic income (BI) on the time spent on housework by husbands and wives in the Republic of Korea. The sample comprises 7,082 married couples drawn from the 2014 Time Use Survey. Results show that without BI, a majority of married Korean women allocate time to housework, increasing as their economic bargaining power decreases. But women whose income is larger than men’s do not reduce time spent on housework corresponding to their economic bargaining power, indicating they may compensate for their deviation from their gender role. Time spent on housework by husbands is negatively associated with their traditional gender-role ideology and economic bargaining power. Furthermore, the interaction term between gender-role ideology and economic dependency indicates that husbands with a traditional ideology spend less time on housework than those with a progressive ideology, even if they have the same economic bargaining power. With a BI, there are no changes in the factors associated with women’s housework. In contrast, husbands no longer do gender with regards to time allocation to housework.