THE UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS THE VIETNAM-NETHERLANDS PROJECT FORMA PROGRAM - / IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DETERMINANTS OF THE NUMBER OF HOURS DOING HOUSEWORK OF THE WIVES IN TWO-EARNER HOUSEHOLDS IN URBAN HO CHI MINH CITY BY LUONG THI CHUNG THUY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT HO CHI MINH CITY, 2003 CERTIFICATION I certify that the substance of this dissertation has not already been submitted for any degree and is not being currently submitted for any other degree. I certify that to the best of my knowledge, any help received in preparing this dissertation, and all sources used, have been acknowledged in this dissertation. Luong Thi Chung Thuy Date: September 81h, 2003 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The thesis in done as the fulfillment of the MA course of Vietnamese - Dutch Project for Development Economics. Thanks to the Netherlands for her Aid and Scholarship during the course.
I would like to thank Dr Gabrielle Berman, Dr Youdi Schipper and Dr Karel Jansen for their worthy teaching, suggestion and comments on my very first step of the thesis. I would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor, Dr Ho Ngoc Phuong, for his supervising and guidance during my writing. I am deeply indebted to MA Ta Thi Bich Thuy for her special support and all materials she gave. Many thanks are also given to Dr Nguyen Van Ngai for his suggestion on my thesis econometric model, Dr Nguyen Thi Hoa, Dr Tran Kim Dung for their helps.
The thesis would not have been completed without their support and encouragement. Many thanks are also given to all project teachers and staffs, especially Mr Tran Vo Hong Son, Ms Tran Thi Ben, Ms Do Thi Anh Nguyet and Ms Dang Kim Chi for their helping during the course. I would like to thank Ms Dang Le Hoa for her checking of my writing in grammar, vocabulary as well as her comments. I also thank Ms Nguyen Phuong Chi, Ms Ha Dung, Ms Pham Le Hoa, Ms Doan Thi Thu Huong, Mr Luu Tien Thuan, Mr Truong Khoa (RAND), and Ms Nguyen Thanh Binh (DOLISA), who gave me many supports in doing the thesis.
My sincere gratitude goes to all of my friends for their helping and discussions. I am also grateful to all people who helped me conducting the survey, especially Ms Phan Hong Ha, Mr Nguyen Thanh Tung, other staffs and interviewers at ACORN Company. I also thank all of respondents who gave me valuable information. Finally, I am thankful to my parents, my aunt·and my brother for their special supports.
I cannot do anything without their supports and encouragement. 11 ABSTRACT The study tries to examine the determinants of the number of hours doing housework of the wives in two-earner households in urban Ho C~i Minh City. The study based on the theories of household behaviour and time allocation to test the effects of women and households' characteristics on the number of housework hours of the wives. The Ordinary Least Square regression and descriptive method are employed in the research.
The findings are that the higher their earnings, the less hours of housework they do; the more young children (aged less than 15) they have, the more hours of housework they do. Moreover, the number of housework hours of the wives has negative relation with the number of other adult female in households. Furthermore, the involvement in housework of husbands proves to be the significant determinant of the number of hours doing housework of the wives. However, the wives' age, the educational level of both spouses, expenditure per capita, appliance of modern equipment in home production, and number of other adult male in households have no significant relationship to the number of hours doing housework of the wives.
l11 TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATION. 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS. VII LIST OF TABLES. VIII LIST OF FIGURES.
IX CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .2 SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH .3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION .5 THESIS' STRUCl"URE. ,,,,,,,,,, 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .2 THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .1 The economics of household behaviour .2 A work-leisure model of household .3 The theory of time allocation .4 Division of work within household .5 Human capital theory .3 THE EMPIRICAL REVIEWS .1 In developed nations .2 In developing countries. 19 CHAPTER 3: MODEL SPECIFICATION .1 THE VARIABLE JUSTIFICATION .2 THE MODEL SPECIFICATION .3 THE SAMPLE SIZE .4 SAMPLING AND DATA COLLECTION METHOD. CHAPTER 4: DETERMINANTS OF NUMBER OF HOUSEWORK HOURS OF MARRIED WORKING WOMEN IN TWO-EARNER HOUSEHOLDS IN HO CHI MINH CITY .1 A GLANCE AT HO CHI MINH CITY .1 General Socio Economic .2 Profile of women ofHo Chi Minh City .2 DETERMINANTS OF NUMBER OF HOUSEWORK HOURS .1 Numerical summaries of variables .2 Pattern of time allocation .2 Quantitative analysis using econometric model.2 Diagnostic testing for regression .3 Interpretation of coefficients and regression results.
50 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS .1 BRIEF SUMMARIES OF THE THESIS FINDINGS. 71 vi ABBREVIATIONS DO LISA Department of Labour, Invalid, and Social Affair HCM Ho Chi Minh City GSO General Statistical Office GDP Gross Domestic Products MOLISA Ministry of Labour, Invalid, and Social Affair OLS Ordinary Least Squares UNDP United Nations Development Programme VLSS Vienam Living Standard Survey vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Summary of selected empirical studies of time allocation of housework .1 Percentage of households getting amenities of home life .2 Female labour divided by age groups .3 The active female aged from 15 divided by educationallevel .4 Sumtnary of variables .5 Pattern of weekly time allocation of spouses .6 Weekly housework hours of the spouses .7 The number of hours of housework by wives' educationallevel .8 The time used for housework according to the wives' age .9 Pattern of housework homs by household size .10 The effect of the presence of children aged 0-15 in the housework hours .11 The housework activities with respect to the domestic help .12 The OLS regression results. 49 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 The choice between Consumption and Leisure .1 The unemployment rate in urban Ho Chi Minh City in 1996-2002 .2 The relationship between housework hours and wives' earJlings .3 The relationship between housework hours and market hours of wives .4 The relationship between housework hours and wives' age .5 The relationship between number of housework hours of wives and number of housework hours of husbands. 4 7 IX CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT In the 1990s, the world, especially the developing countries has experienced great achievements in economic development.
It is not only the achievements in economic growth, but also the improvement in the living standard of human beings, poverty and inequality reduction (UNDP, 1997). However, women seem to be less benefited from such achievements as claimed by the United Nation that "women constitute half of the world's population and performed nearly two-third of the work hours, receive one-tenth of the work's income and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property" (Yarr, 1994: 111). Traditionally, within household women are assigned to work at home while men are .assigned to work in the market to earn for the household (World Bank, 2001). Women become the dependents of the men and thus they have few opportunities of participating in development process and enjoying the development's achievements (World Bank, 2001).
The work of women at home is not considered as 'work' just because it is unpaid and then its contribution to the total welfare of household is ignored. In the modern society, together with the industrial innovation and women liberalization waves more women enter market work. They in fact accomplish great achievements in many fields and their human characteristics and status are also improved (Alvarez· and Miles, 2002). However, they still have to maintain all the unpaid housework so that they are more burdened by dual work (World Bank, 2001).
Their load of work will increase when they get married and have children (Biau and Ferber, 1992). Due to the time constraint, time available for activities such as leisure, schooling and housework must be reduced as a result of an increase in time spent for paid work and social work. However, which one will be reduced? Does time of doing ' housework reduce? Vietnam has achieved rapid economic growth since the Doimoi policy implemented in 1986. Despite its great achievements, the inequality seems to rise (Gallup, 2002).
In recent years, the issU((S of gender division of family labour at home have been paid much attention to. Some studies of time allocation of household members found that Vietnamese women are overloaded with disproportionate burden of housework (World Bank, 1999a) Vietnam female labor force increased 12 percent from 25,228,859 up to 28,325,968 persons in 1996-2000 (MOLISA, 2001). The second Vietnam Living Standard Survey in 1997 showed that the annual average hours of income-generating activities outside home are almost the same for both men and women aged over 15. On average adult male spent 1464 hours per year and adult female spent 1420 hours per year for income-generating activities (Desai, 2000).
Although the hours per week that women spent on unpaid household activities had a trend to reduce from 15.52 hours in 1992-1993 down to 12.75 hours in 1997-1998, their time spent for housework is nearly double that of men (GSO, 1999:197, 199). Moreover, in the survey of six localities' (Ho Chi Minh, Qui Nhon cities, Nam Dinh, Thai Binh, Dong Thap and Yen Bai provinces), it wasfound that although there exists the increasing trend of sharing housework among couples, the large proportion of housework still relies on the wives (Nguyen, 2000). It seems that the reduction in household work cannot compensate for the increase in market work and that women expand their work at the expense of their time for rest, training, community activities and self-development (Yarr, 1994: 115). As a result, the heavy workload may have the negative impact on women's health, and in the long run, may affect the quality of their children (World Bank, 1999a).
In other words, the women's traditional responsibilities within households may limit their participation in the society (Long et al, 2000). It raises an interesting issue that how to reduce women's burden workload and how to solve the confliction between their full-time market work and traditional roles at home when they participate in the paid employment outside home. The problem is whether the women really liberate from the domestic chores within household when they increase the participation in the labour force, especially for married women. It is interesting to examine, in this study, among various factors such as economic factors, household characteristics and composition which factors determine housework time allocation within the household in order to help married women who engage in income-generating activities out of the burden of household work.
In so doing, they will have more time to participate in other activities ~nd contribute more to the social welfare and economic development.2 SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH In Vietnam, the problem of gender inequality has been recent concerns and many studies have been done. However, most studies focused on the inequality in market work of women such as the wage inequality in Vietnam in the 1990s of Gallup (2002) and the gender wage gap in the study of Liu (2002). There are some studies on the inequality of division of labour between men and women in the household in terms of time allocation over various activities including productive, reproductive and leisure (Tran, 1997; Le, 1997, 1999a, 1999b; Hoang, 1998; Nguyen, 1998; Tran, 1998; Long et al, 2000; Le, Nguyen and Do (eds), 2002). Nevertheless, these studies just stand at the phenomenon and descriptive analysis.
None of these examines factors determine the household chores using the quantitative approach.