When the Work is Never Done: Time Allocation in US Family Farm Households

In this paper we use a Nash-cooperative bargaining framework to examine how members of US family farm households allocate their time between work and leisure. Time allocation categories for parents include farm, off-farm, and household work, as well as leisure time; for children, the categories are farm work and leisure time. The analysis includes 227 Wisconsin dairy farm households. Most notably, the results confirm that US women and children make significant labor contributions and that both women and men are decision-makers regarding their own and their children's time allocation. The results also show that intra-household time allocation on US farms is gender specific, and that the father's economic status has the largest impact on the time allocation of household members. The findings also confirm that children's labor makes an important economic contribution to the operation of their family farm.