Women with higher salaries do less housework (duh)

This paper published in the Journal of Marriage and Family has been drawing a lot of attention lately (see this Yahoo video). Like it's a big discovery.

Hmmm. Higher wage = higher opportunity cost of time (spent in housework) = economize on housework. To an economist this is soooo obvious. Note that this prediction works even if the household makes choices like a single decision-maker (i.e. women and men are not autonomous, but make choices as if a single mind). Of course empirical work like this on quantifying the size of the predicted effect is welcome. Still, the real mystery to me is why this and not some other (more surprising) study made the rounds in the press.


Disclaimer: have only read the abstract and some media reports. But I doubt if I'll change my mind if I ever get to read the whole thing.