The effect of economic dependency on housework time.

This paper's purpose is to test whether the less wages wives earn than their husbands, the more chores they do or not from dual income families in South Korea. There are two major hypotheses: One is a comparative advantages hypothesis and another is a gender display hypothesis(Brines, 1994). The latter occurs in a patriarchal society and a Confucianism tradition remains important as a social ethic in South Korea.
Brines(1994) addressed that a gender display hypothesis could be sustained, when males’ squared economic dependency coefficient is negative and females’ squared economic dependency coefficient is positive. However, according to the Korean Time Use Survey 2009, the majority of husbands do not housework. This makes previous researches do not prove a gender display hypothesis perfectly.
The author analyzed data after separating families by husbands’ housework time and tentatively conclude that 1) a squared economic dependency affects on housework time 2) females’ coefficient is positive and males’ coefficient is negative and 3) wives whose husbands do housework spend more time doing housework than wives whose husbands do not participate in housework. This means that males’ doing housing work cannot reduce females’ housework time. Rather, males’ participating in housework covers up a fact that males exploit females.