Work, leisure, household production and transfers: the use of time of italian men and women during the economic crisis

How do Italians allocate their lost market-work hours during the recent economic recession? Is household production increasing its relevance as a market-substitute in times of economic hardship? Is the economic crisis affecting negatively gender equality and favouring a return of backward-looking gender contracts? This paper stems on Italian time use micro-data for years 2002/3, 2008/9 and 2013/4 to describe changes occurred in the use of time during the financial crisis with a life-course and a gender perspective. First, we develop a temporal analysis of life-course gender differences in time allocation. Then, we estimate sex-specific age profiles of non-market production, consumption and transfers for the three years. With our results from the non-market transfer accounts we aim to gain insights on whether and to what extent the financial crisis is increasing household production, affecting the directions of non-cash transfers as well as gender division of work. Finally, we provide age and gender specific measures of total work and leisure inequality over the three years.