Time allocation decisions of urban women in a developing country

Female time allocation decisions are examined using household data from Conakry, Guinea, a poor and rapidly growing African urban center. The analysis incorporates two aspects of these decisions that are thought to be particularly important in developing countries: the heterogeneity of labor market choices, and the role of women's non-market productive activities. Trichotomous logit models of female labor market behavior distinguishing between self-employment and wage employment are estimated. Schooling is found to play a major role in sorting women among sectors, with more education strongly increasing the likelihood of wage employment and decreasing the likelihood of self-employment relative to non-participation. Young children appear to encourage entry into self-employment, where childcare and market work are relatively compatible, but not wage employment. The results suggest that increasing girls' access to post-primary education will lead to higher overall participation and a shift to wage or formal sector employment. A simple model of the allocation of women's time to market work and housework is developed and applied to the data. Time allocation decisions are modelled empirically using a simultaneous tobit approach which recognizes the jointness in market and non-market labor supply choices and permits non-participation in either or both activities. Female time use is affected by market opportunities, household composition, and income in ways generally anticipated by theory. The empirical specification permits the measurement of the direct impact of time in one activity on the time in the other and shows that an hour of home work reduces market work by approximately an equivalent amount, while an hour of market work reduces the time in home work by 0.35 hours. Although the strong negative effect of non-market activity on market work seems to show that women's opportunities to engage in income-earning activities are constrained by their domestic responsibilities, conclusions for policies, such as the public provision of childcare services, are not straightforward. Most women already have potential substitute childcare or domestic workers in the form of other adults in the household who are not in the labor force. Policies that raise potential labor market incomes, such as increasing access to general schooling and vocational training, appear to be the most direct way of encouraging greater female participation and time in market-oriented activities.