Turning back the clock: Beliefs about gender roles during lockdown

We study the impact of lockdown measures on beliefs about gender roles. We collect data from a representative sample of 1,000 individuals in France during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. To measure beliefs about gender roles, we use questions from the 2018 wave of the European Values Study, and match respondents from the two surveys to compare beliefs before and during lockdown. We find evidence that the lockdown period was associated with a shift towards more traditional beliefs about gender roles. The effects are concentrated among men from the most time-constrained households and from households where bargaining with a partner over sharing responsibility for household production was likely to be an issue. Finally, we find correlational evidence that beliefs in equal gender roles increase with household income. Overall, our results suggest that men are more likely to hold egalitarian beliefs about gender roles when these beliefs are not costly for them.

Who is doing the chores and childcare in dual-earner couples during the COVID-19 era of working from home?

In 2020-21, parents' work-from-home days increased three-and-a-half-fold following the initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns compared to 2015-19. At the same time, many schools offered virtual classrooms and daycares closed, increasing the demand for household-provided childcare. Using weekday workday time diaries from American Time Use Survey and looking at parents in dual-earner couples, we examine parents' time allocated to paid work, chores, and childcare in the COVID-19 era by the couple's joint work location arrangements. We determine the work location of the respondent directly from their diary and predict the partner's work-from-home status. Parents working from home alone spent more time on childcare compared to their counterparts working on-site, though only mothers worked fewer paid hours. When both parents worked from home compared to on-site, mothers and fathers maintained their paid hours and spent more time on childcare, though having a partner also working from home reduced child supervision time. On the average day, parents working from home did equally more household chores, regardless of their partner's work-from-home status; however, on the average school day, only fathers working from home alone spent more time on household chores compared to their counterparts working on-site. We also find that mothers combined paid work and child supervision to a greater extent than did fathers.

Pushing or clicking the grocery cart? Health and economic concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Online Grocery Shopping (OGS) has grown dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is unknown, however, how consumers weighed pandemic situational factors versus household production considerations of timesaving and cost. We collect and analyze survey data from a nationally representative sample to examine how consumers with different health and socio-demographic profiles consider these factors for OGS choices and how their choices changed in the first seven months of the pandemic. We find that consumers with moderate-to-high income, white, having insurance, and not in the labor force value the timesaving and convenience of OGS more than pandemic situational factors. Still, some consumers with health risks choose to shop in person because of the cost of OGS. Lung disease, diabetes, mental health conditions, age, income, and college degree explain the dynamics of OGS choice as the pandemic evolved. Our findings shed light on the development of technology-assisted adaptation to future public health emergencies.