The demand for domestic services, capital services, wife\u27s home time, and other inputs: an econometric analysis of technical and other changes affecting U.S. households, 1900-1985

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the long-term changes in household production caused by technical and other changes in the United States. The household production model was employed to development of conceptual framework for viewing household decisions on inputs into household production and labor supply;In the empirical analyses, two methodologies were used. First, a VAR (vector autoregression) model was employed to examine the long-term relationships among six aggregate U.S. variables, 1900-1985: the number of immigrants, price of household durable goods, the unemployment rate, average household income, the number of domestic service workers, and the wage rate of domestic servants. The results revealed significant interactions and causal relations between variables in the specified VAR system;Second, a set of household input demand functions were fitted to the aggregate data for 1948-1985 using the almost-ideal-demand system (AIDS). Plausible and significant results were obtained from the six equation demand system consists of domestic services, services of household durable goods, commercial laundry and cleaning services, food away from home, wife\u27s home time, and residual category