The impact of household labor-saving technologies along the family life cycle
Raquel Tsukada & Arnaud Dupuy
#2016-047
This paper investigates heterogeneity of the impact of labor-saving
technologies on household time use across stages of the family life
cycle. Using the Ghana Living Standards Survey 5, we assess the impact
of two treatments - piped water and borehole water supply technologies.
Results confirm the hypothesis that technology is more useful for
relaxing the time constraint in households with children. The effect is
stronger the more labor-saving is the technology. In households with
young children (0 to 6 years old), however, the technologies show no
significant effect. Parents in that stage of the family life cycle are
in such an extreme time constraint that the relatively small amount of
time saved with the water supply technology is not enough to
significantly release their burden.
Keywords: labor-saving technology, household production, family life cycle
JEL Classification: D12, D13