Home production and time use in an epidemic

Abstract

This paper examines the role of home production in gender-based responses of time use to the COVID-19 pandemic. We develop a tractable model featuring time allocation choices and susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemiological dynamics. The model economy has two steady states, and an outbreak can trigger a transition from a disease-free steady state to an epidemic steady state, accompanied by a shift in economic activity toward the home. Our parameterized model well reproduces pandemic-driven variations in time allocation in the US. This stems largely from the combination of three key features of home production: the high substitutability between market goods and home goods, the asymmetric immunity of home production to the epidemic and the comparative advantage of women in household work. Our decomposition analysis finds that elevated home production accounts for a sizable share of changes in market work and its gender gap during the pandemic. Remote work limits fluctuations in time use but worsens gender inequality in market work.