The allocation of time within native and foreign couples living in Italy

The empirical analysis of the intra-household allocation of time suggests that female labour market participation in Italy is lower than in other European countries. Conversely, the contribution in terms of domestic work and childcare by Italian men is very low. Studies found that the gender gap in time allocation strongly depends on the traditional social norms, and on the cultural background of the subjects. The aim of this paper is to investigate if people resident in Italy but born in other countries, suffer from the same decision-making process of Italian families, involving a gendered division of roles in the intrahousehold allocation of time. Using the Italian Time Use survey 2013, a Seemingly Unrelated Regression Estimation model of paid and unpaid work, leisure and personal care, is estimated to compare couples in which both partners have Italian nationality with couples in which at least one partner is an immigrant.