Domestic equipment does not increase domestic work: a response to Bittman, Rice and Wajcman

Bittman, Rice and Wajcman (BR&W) reopen the old controversy over the domestic labor paradox. They deploy evidence which directly connects household ownership of domestic equipment to household members' time allocations, suggesting paradoxically that possession of household equipment in effect adds to domestic labor rather than reducing. There is a methodological trap, confusing evidence of cross-sectional differences between people for historical change in people's behavior. BR&W say they are aware of this trap (in the guise of unmeasured heterogeneity). This, unfortunately, does not stop them falling into it. They are also guilty of a minor, though revealing, error of scholarship: they claim that the 1997 Australian time diary survey provides a unique opportunity by collecting data on equipment in diarist's households. In fact, a brief scan of the collected documentation on around 300 time-use studies worldwide reveals that many post-1980 diary studies to include this information. That it is infrequently used reflects complexities of analysis and interpretation which BR&W apparently prefer to ignore. The evidence is that, across the world, in the second half of the twentieth century, unpaid housework and cooking have regularly declined.