In which we pay an estimated tax penalty

So, last year, with DH’s unemployment and our various deductions, we ended up getting $500 back from the government at tax time, even though we hadn’t paid in estimated taxes.  So this year we figured we weren’t required to pay estimated taxes because Turbo Tax said we hadn’t last year.  We were wrong.  Why?

1.  One of my legacy stock funds (American Century Trust from back when my father took care of my investments) decided to sell parts of itself and cause a capital gain of 6K which it then reinvested in itself.  It did this last year but only for 2K and hadn’t done it for the previous 12+ years so I thought last year was an aberration.  I was wrong.  Now I want to sell the entire thing so I don’t get these surprises each year.  (On the plus side, when I investigated last year, this capital gains thing they do lowers the capital gains that will accrue when the stock is actually sold.  Still, unlike my father, I prefer my investments to be simple and predictable.)

2.  I was stupid and made major charitable donations Jan 2015 instead of Dec 2014 because I didn’t understand our state tax situation for next year because … yes I know I have a phd in economics don’t judge me.  (I suspect Brigitte Madrian thinks I’m stupid too.  This is one of my great sorrows in life.)

3.  The stupidest of the stupids… I ridiculously assumed that if we claimed 0 deductions on withholding that the government would take out about the right amount of tax for our income so I wouldn’t have to think about taxes on the wage part, just the non-wage income income.  That is apparently seriously untrue.  Yes I know we are how old and never realized this before… but we never had to stop paying estimated taxes for a year and then start up again (and we had bigger mortgage tax deductions…).  Gov’t withholding  on your wages is not enough once you hit a high enough income.  I don’t know why I assumed it would be… it’s not like they can take out larger percentages of your paycheck as your income goes up.  [Update:  The gov’t DOES take out the appropriate amount of income if you’re single (and work steadily).  And the way it does it is by taking a larger % out of larger paychecks (unlike Social Security which takes out the same % and then just stops when you hit the cap).  The gap between monthly payments as a single vs. as a married is substantial and at my income level seems to be assuming that the spouse is earning less.  Which, in this case, he really isn’t.]

4.  We’ve never actually made more than 150K/year before and hit the tax penalty.  So we thought we only had to pay 100% of last year’s tax, which we were sure we’d do because DH has been employed all year instead of unemployed half the year… turns out we actually needed to pay 110% of last year’s tax.  And somehow we paid something like 108% of last year’s tax, give or take.

Add to that are the things we knew were changing, like less housing interest, and it turns out we both owe the government a pretty hefty 4 figure check and have incurred a penalty of $31.  It’s a good thing we’ve been saving up.

By the time we figured this all out, I was basically like, $31?  Screw it.  (Should we figure out if we can pay estimated taxes for 2014 now to eliminate the penalty?  Whatever.  Screw it.  It’s $31.  Which feels like nothing when you’re already writing a check for over $6K.  Even though it really isn’t nothing, I’d pay $31 not to have to think about taxes anymore this year.)

Apparently if we pay our tax bill early, we can cut the penalty to $21.  At least according to TaxAct.

Now to figure out the estimated taxes for next year… because there’s nothing like following up a huge check with another huge check.  But hey, rich people problems.  If only I didn’t feel so dumb.

Updates

Because everybody cares about my life as much as I do.  (Not really!)

Daycare:

After one week at the new daycare, DC2 decided ze loved it.  Ze proudly proclaimed that ze had friends and named some.  Dropping off only took a little lingering.  After two weeks, ze stopped having nightmares.  Dropoffs became, “Yeah mom, bye, whatever” (though more in body language than words) and instead of clinging and crying ze complained about getting hugged if my coat was wet from rain.  Ze informed us that ze loves hir teachers.  Every day when we pick hir up ze says, “I had a good day.”  Since starting, hir eczema has also been entirely gone, which makes me suspect that they’re a lot better about making sure that ze doesn’t accidentally eat wheat.  Either that or there’s some topical allergen ze isn’t being exposed to in the new place (that just happened to not always be present at the old place).

High quality daycare is amazing and awesome.  What a difference!  I am a bit worried about next year though… I feel like we haven’t quite been fair with DC2 compared to DC1 who never had to experience a bad schooling experience.

Nice kitty who sometimes pees on cloth:

So far we’ve tried having 4 litterboxes for 2 kittens (6 litterboxes for 3 cats, but the other two are in the utility room instead of the master bathroom the kittens use as home base).  One covered litterbox (formerly 2 covered litterboxes), 3 uncovered.  3 with standard litter, 1 with special pine litter.  Different depths of litter.  Scooped every single night whether they need it or not.

They stay in the master bathroom (~100 sq feet, lots of windows, cupboards, scratching posts, a cat house, etc.) overnight until the late afternoon.  This keeps our older kitty from feeling overwhelmed and has allowed us to minimize pee damage.  They’re used to it and willingly go back to their home-base at night when it’s time to go.  If we let them out earlier they often just stay in the room.

We’ve tried not leaving cloth out, for example, putting our bedsheets away before letting the kittens out.

We’ve tried litter retraining (not letting the kittens out of the master bathroom while we’re out of town for a few days).

All of these have worked to decrease the amount of peeing on things, but none eliminated it.

The most recent thing that we still have our fingers crossed for was Prozac.  Nice kitty did not like being pilled at all, and while on Prozac she would hide from us and mostly stay under our bed or in the master bath during their family time.  The vet said to try it for two weeks.  During those two weeks she didn’t pee on anything (other than the litter, presumably), even though it seemed to make her more anxious rather than less anxious!

After the two weeks, we stopped the Prozac, because nice kitty really hated being pilled, and the vet said it was possible that even after stopping Prozac after the two weeks her peeing on cloth habit might also be gone.  So far so good.  But we keep waiting to find something peed on.

So those are my updates.  Fun times.

How to fix some random kid (and grown-up!) problems

We get a lot of comments, both good and bad, about how much stuff we make our oldest kid do.  Ze, for example, makes hir own lunch for school, has a list of household chores to do (mostly limited only by height restrictions), and is in charge of remembering things like homework and recurring special things like pizza money on pizza day or that Wednesday is special uniform day.

It’s expecting a lot of a 7 year old (and even more of a 6 or 5 year old, which DC1 once was!)  But it’s something we need to do to keep our household running in the absence of a full-time live-in housekeeper.  As full-time working adults with high-level jobs and a 2 year old we just don’t have that kind of mental load.  And DC1 is capable and it isn’t usually that big a deal when we all forget things.

Except occasionally DC1 forgets to wear the special uniform 3 weeks in a row and we get an email noting that if there’s a fourth time, then demerits will follow.  We’re not sure what demerits are going to do, but they sure sound scary.  Or DC1 will forget chores or homework and blissfully spend the evening playing board-games with DH, only remembering long after bedtime or the next morning that there’s an assignment due.

So here’s what we do that works.

Uniform, pizza money, and school holidays/fairs are all put on DC1’s wall calendar.  Each day at bedtime ze crosses off the day and sees what is listed for the next day.  If it’s the special uniform, ze takes it out of the closet and hangs it on hir dresser knob.  If it’s pizza money, ze demands it from DH and puts it in hir back pack.  If it’s a holiday, then we’re reminded.

For that long list of chores, during one of DH’s business trips I made DC1 make a full checklist of all the chores ze has to do each night.  Homework (or workbooks on weekends), piano practicing, making lunch for the next day (if applicable), putting away the clean silverware, loading the dishwasher, feeding the kittens, helping fold laundry (if applicable).  (See, we’re tyrants!  DC1 never gets to do anything fun.)  Once all of those chores are done, DC1 is free to spend hir time as ze wishes on weekends, and can do anything except video games on weekdays (since even the checklist couldn’t help DC1 remember hir chores if video games are an option).

Of course, it’s not enough to do the homework or make the lunch.  Those items also have to make it into the backpack.  So there’s a new rule that they have to go into the backpack as soon as they’re done.  They’re not allowed to sit out on desk or counter where they can be forgotten and then I have to turn back to get them on the way to school and everybody is late.  Because I hate that.

So… calendar, checklist, and automation.  That’s how we keep things together with DC1 during the week and that’s how we’re able to give DC1 so many responsibilities.

Related:  financial diffraction talks about using her calendar to keep track of money

How do you and yours get out the door in the morning every day of the week?  Any tips?

I don’t think I’d find reading about my life to be very interesting

But I do find reading about my thoughts to be interesting.  (I waste a lot of time rereading old posts of ours.  There’s some good stuff in there!)  And sometimes I crack myself up.  (What does that mean about my sense of humor?  Hm…)

On a day to day thing though, meh.  I work.  I spend time with my family.  I do laundry and groceries and occasionally shop at whole foods.  I’m not bored living my life, but reading about it would be pretty far down in list of things to do (somewhere above “things that are really painful” but below “things I don’t enjoy doing but have to get done anyway”).

This lack of interesting stuff going on in my life seems to have increased (widened?) with DH getting a new job and making money.  I just wouldn’t want to read about someone like me.  I was more interesting when we had to scrimp and save for stuff.

But interesting isn’t really what I’ve ever been aiming for.  One doesn’t really want to live in interesting times.  (Though one does.  Which is depressing.)

And I admit, the daycare saga may be interesting to some, but it’s just depressing to me!  My poor little DC2.  Similarly having an incontinent kitten.  I’m sure I will look back on nice kitty’s preference for piles of cloth and laugh some day.

Obviously the solution is to ask #2 to write more about her life.  Because what she’s been doing is tres interesting!  At least, I think it is.

Would you find your life interesting to read about, and is that a good or a bad thing in your opinion?  Do you prefer reading about people like you or people who are different or both or neither?

I used to like people more

I have become quite the misanthrope.  (#2 has always been one and welcomes #1 to the club.)

That’s not to say I actively *dislike* people, just that I’m not seeking people out.  I’m not trying to get to know people better unless we hit it off right away.  I’m no longer curious about what makes most folks tick.

I didn’t used to be this way.  For the longest time as long as a person wasn’t a bully I would like them.  I liked crazy people who were always getting themselves into trouble.*  I liked people other folks would find annoying.  I liked anybody who would put up with me.

I think I figured out why I no longer like so many people.  Part of it, of course, is family life and work demands that lead me to not have as much time for other people’s craziness.**

But the main part, I think, and the part that came as a revelation, is that I used to have a growth mindset about people.  If they did something I found annoying, like constantly making the same stupid decisions that hurt themselves, well, that was something that could be fixed.  That was something *I* could fix.

But I no longer try to fix people, other than my students whose math anxiety I carefully remove as part of my job.  (That’s a healthy level of fixing people, I think, and they’re receptive and it’s necessary.)

And since I no longer try to fix people, that means any annoyingness, any self-destruction… that’s permanent, and not temporary.  It isn’t interesting because I’ve seen it before and there’s no reason to explore the insanity any further because there’s nothing I can do except be silent witness.  And I’d rather not do that.  Not when there’s work to do and family to hang out with.

Part of being older is realizing that I don’t like as many people as I used to… and more importantly, that I don’t really care that much.  (Though I do feel bad that I don’t care, to paraphrase Brittney in The Misery Chick episode.  Daria says that makes me a good person, even though I suspect I’m really not.)

*Disclaimer:  #2 was crazy when I met her, but I liked her because we shared hobbies and world-views and she was smart and funny and definitely not because I found her craziness interesting, because I didn’t find her craziness particularly interesting because it was too self-destructive and was definitely beyond my ability to even to try to change, though I did get her a book.  She helped herself with the help of professionals.

**Of course, we always like you, gentle readers.  Our readers are AWESOME.  Or at least our commenters are awesome.  We assume our silent readers are as well.  They at least have great taste in blogs, which is a good sign.

Have your views on or desire to hang out with random members of the human race changed over time?

RBOC

• The internet thinks I have one of three things:  1. LPR or silent reflux, 2. a twisted colon, or 3.  an appendix that is planning to burst in a few days.  Fortunately the symptoms are supposed to get a lot worse before my appendix actually bursts.  If we fail to post one of these days it’s probably because #2 is en route to her new home and it hurts for me to sit up.  (See, it’s not GERD because the symptoms go away completely when I lie down instead of getting worse.  My symptoms most match LPR.  LPR is difficult to diagnose and most of the treatments are ineffective, so…)
• Mint tea seems pretty effective.  Tums not so much.  Baking soda somewhat.  Mylanta, surprisingly not so helpful.  I’m not sure what to make of that.
• And…. after three days of awful heartburn only soothed by lying down or constantly drinking mint tea… I’m back to normal.  Maybe it’s some kind of virus to go along with the cold.  The body is a mysterious thing.
• And four days after that, my normally 5+ week cycle (or non-existent cycle, depending) has shortened to 2 weeks.  Peri-menopause?  Thyroid?  Cysts?  Weird reaction to weird illness?  Night weaning?  Who knows.  I guess I’ll wait another 2 weeks to see what happens.  I much prefer non-existent to every 2 weeks.
• We made the mistake of buying bed-wetting sheets at the grocery store (either for DC2 or for the kitten who pees, or maybe both, we don’t remember), so now every time we’re at the grocery store we get coupons for adult disposable underwear.  Boy have they got our demographic wrong.
• One of my friends has been trying IVF but the first cycled failed.  It’s very sad.  :(
• It’s a busy week!  Hopefully we will be more entertaining in the future!

Ask the grumpies: Time spent on housework by child status and gender

Laura Vanderkam asks:

Looking at the ATUS, how does having a kid affect how much time people devote to housework? Is this different for men and women? There are lots of different stories one could come up with: everyone does more housework because there’s more housework to be done. Everyone does less housework because there’s less available time to do it in. Mom does more and dad does less because they wind up conforming to traditional gender roles (and maybe mom winds up working less for pay, and so is the one around to do it). Maybe mom does a lot more and dad does a little more. So I’d love to know what the numbers actually show.

Lalalalala, Stata.  Ok, so I’m using the 2002-2012 ATUS here because I’m too lazy to download the 2013 one even though it’s now available.  In a bit I’ll show how things have changed if you limit to just 2011 and 2012.

How does having a kid affect how much time people devote to housework:

. ttest  bls_hhact_hwork, by(hh_child)

Two-sample t test with equal variances
——————————————————————————
Group |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
———+——————————————————————–
No |   72370     39.6372    .3054511    82.17145    39.03851    40.23588
Yes |   64590    44.33705    .3295443    83.75224    43.69114    44.98296
———+——————————————————————–
combined |  136960    41.85364    .2241497    82.95358    41.41431    42.29297
———+——————————————————————–
diff |           -4.699851    .4488466               -5.579582    -3.82012
——————————————————————————
diff = mean(No) – mean(Yes)                                   t = -10.4710
Ho: diff = 0                                     degrees of freedom =   136958

Ha: diff < 0                 Ha: diff != 0                 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.0000         Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000          Pr(T > t) = 1.0000

Urgh, I can’t figure out how to make this pretty without making it a picture and I’m too lazy to do that (in word you make it courier new 9 or smaller and it’s all pretty).  Anyhow, this is saying that people with kids spend 44.33 minutes on housework and people without kids spend 39.63 minutes on housework during the reference day.  This is a difference of 4.7 minutes.  This difference (two-tailed is the one in the middle, since we didn’t have a prior about which direction it should go) is significant at the 5% level (also at the .0001% level).  So kids create housework.  (Which is no surprise, but the surprise is that people spend time doing housework– childcare is measured under a different variable.)

Note that theologyandgeometry reminded me that I’m supposed to be using sampling weights when I do this, and they do matter somewhat in the regression results.  Unfortunately, ttest doesn’t take weights.   The kludge is a pain in the rear in Stata 11 (which is what I have on my home computer), so I apologize, but you’re getting the unweighted results.

Next:  Is this different for men and women?

Let’s say I want to answer this question in one fell swoop.  I would do a regression with an interaction.  It would look something like this:

unweighted:
Housework_min = 18.96 + 37.47*Female – 1.04*hh_child + 8.21*(Femalehh_child)

I can’t get the standard errors to line up in wordpress, but the se for the intercept is 0.31, se for Female is 0.57, se for hh_child is 0.44, se for the interaction term is 0.82.   To see whether these coefficients are significant, you take the coeff and divide by the standard error to get the p-value.  If that number is bigger than 1.96, it is significant at the 5% level.  These coefficients are all significant.

weighted to take into account sampling weights:
Housework_min = 15.47 + 38.50*Female – 0.67*hh_child + 4.06*(Femalehh_child)

Here everything is significant at the 1% level except the main effect on hh_child is no longer significant even at the 10% level, with a se of 0.49.  So weights do matter.  Thanks for reminding me, theologyandgeometry!

Ok, so what does this regression *mean*?  Plug and chug, my dear Watson, plug and chug.

The way the dataset is coded, if you’re female, Female is coded as 1.  If you’re not female, then it is coded as 0 (it doesn’t allow for female and not female at the same time).  Similarly, hh_child is one if you have a child under age 18 in the household and 0 if you don’t.

So to answer: “how does having a kid affect how much time people devote to housework?” You would take [18.96 + 37.47*Female – 1.04*hh_child + 8.21*(Femalehh_child)] and plug in 1 for hh_child and then plug in 0 for hh_child.

[18.96 + 37.47*Female – 1.04 + 8.21*(Female)] – [18.96 + 37.47*Female – 0 + 0)]

The 18.96 drops out, the 37.47 drops out, and you’re left with -1.04 + 8.21*Female.

For women:  [-1.04 + 8.21*1] => having kids correlates with 7.17 minutes more housework

For men:  [-1.04 + 0]  => having kids correlates with 1.04 minutes less of housework

The savvy econometrician will note here that we’ve seen these numbers before– that -1.04 is the coefficient for the hh_child variable, and the 7.17 is what you get if you add that coefficient to the interaction term.

Doing the weighted version, you get:

For women: [-0.67+4.06*1] = having kids correlates with 3.39 minutes more housework

For men:  [-0.67+0] => having kids correlates with 0.67 minutes less of housework

Now, one concern is that there are a lot more single parent households with women heads than with men.  Let’s see what happens when we limit to married households with both spouses present only.

ttest  bls_hhact_hwork if married==1, by(hh_child)

Two-sample t test with equal variances
——————————————————————————
Group |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
———+——————————————————————–
0. No |   27875    40.94371    .5036533    84.08898    39.95653     41.9309
1. Yes |   40403    46.88803    .4207222    84.56725     46.0634    47.71265
———+——————————————————————–
combined |   68278    44.46122    .3230849    84.42228    43.82797    45.09446
———+——————————————————————–
diff |           -5.944315    .6569407               -7.231918   -4.656712
——————————————————————————
diff = mean(0. No) – mean(1. Yes)                             t =  -9.0485
Ho: diff = 0                                     degrees of freedom =    68276

Ha: diff < 0                 Ha: diff != 0                 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.0000         Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000          Pr(T > t) = 1.0000

Having a child makes time spent on housework go up even more for two parent households than it does for everybody (about 6 minutes).  The difference is about one minute for unmarried households.  Maybe dads make a lot of mess.  More likely single moms don’t have time to do additional household chores while single people do have more time.  (Doing the interaction, this difference in the effect of having children between married and single couples is significant.)

Limiting to married couples only:

Housework_min = 14.23 + 51.44*Female +4.14*hh_child + 2.31*(Femalehh_child)

The interaction term is only marginally significant, and note a sign change on the hh_child coefficient.  Having a child affects married people by 4.14 +2.31*female.  Married men’s housework goes up by 4.14 minutes after having a child, but married women’s goes up by 6.45 minutes.

When you do it weighted, everything is significant at the 5% level.

Housework_min = 13.16+ 50.95*Female +2.51*hh_child + 3.39*(Femalehh_child)

Having a child affects married people by 2.51 + 3.39*female.  Married men’s housework goes up by 2.51 minutes after having a child, but a married woman’s goes up by 5.9 minutes.

Limiting to unmarried people only:

Housework_min = 22.29 + 28.89*Female – 5.41*hh_child + 6.34*(Femalehh_child)

All coefficients are significant.  Having a child affects unmarried people by -5.41 + 6.34*female.  Unmarried men’s housework goes down by 5.41 minutes and Unmarried women’s goes up by 6.34 minutes.  (Note that there are ~8,000 single men with kids and 16,000 single women with kids here, though I’m including married people whose spouses are absent in the “not married” category because we’re talking about housework.  It is more standard to include them in the married category when you’re looking at outcomes we care about like child well-being.)

Weighting the unmarried people regression:

Housework_min = 17.68 + 26.93*Female – 4.36*hh_child + 1.60*(Femalehh_child)

Here the interaction term is no longer significant, which suggests there isn’t a difference by gender in terms how how having a child affects housework.  Makes me wonder who the sampling frame is over- or under- sampling!  Here having a child affects unmarried people by -4.36 + 1.60*female.  Unmarried men’s housework goes down by 4.36 minutes when having a child and unmarried women’s also goes down (!) by 2.76 minutes.

There are other cuts that can be made… by age, by race, by ethnicity, by education, by work status etc.

I’m going to look now at the most recent years, 2011 and 2012.  Men are supposed to be more equal partners these days so…

. ttest  bls_hhact_hwork if year>2010, by(hh_child)

Two-sample t test with equal variances
——————————————————————————
Group |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
———+——————————————————————–
0. No |   13862    38.72681     .700486    82.47311    37.35376    40.09985
1. Yes |   11060    44.37197    .8187207    86.10202    42.76713    45.97681
———+——————————————————————–
combined |   24922    41.23204    .5330305    84.14795    40.18727    42.27682
———+——————————————————————–
diff |           -5.645164    1.072289               -7.746914   -3.543414
——————————————————————————
diff = mean(0. No) – mean(1. Yes)                             t =  -5.2646
Ho: diff = 0                                     degrees of freedom =    24920

Ha: diff < 0                 Ha: diff != 0                 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.0000         Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000          Pr(T > t) = 1.0000

Having a child still increases the amount of housework done by around 5.6 minutes (so more than for the 10-year period).

Housework_min = 20.34 + 33.75*Female – 0.42*hh_child + 8.68*(Femalehh_child)

Here the coefficient on hh_child is nowhere near significant.  The interaction term is still significant, but having a child has no significant effect on minutes worked by itself, only as it interacts with gender.  Men no longer work less when they have a child.  But women still work more!  Results are pretty similar with the weights.

Limiting to married only provides:

Housework_min = 16.35 + 46.28*Female + 4.04*hh_child + 2.50*(Femalehh_child)

Now hh_child is significant, but the interaction term is no longer significant!  Everyone in a married couple works 4 min more (you could argue that women work 6 min more, but that difference is not significant) once they have children.  Again the weights matter, because with them, you get:

Housework_min = 15.06 + 44.79*Female + 1.55*hh_child + 6.22*(Femalehh_child)

With the weights, hh_child is back to being no longer significant and the interaction term is significant at the 10% level.   Married women work marginally significantly more than married women do upon birth of a child.

Limiting to the unmarried (and those with absent spouses) provides:

Housework_min = 22.77 + 27.25*Female – 3.89*hh_child + 7.72*(Femalehh_child)

These are all significant.  Having a child decreases the amount of housework for unmarried men by 4 minutes, but increases it for unmarried women by around 4 minutes.  (These results hold if I drop people who are married with spouse absent, so it’s not like truckers are driving this result.)

Putting the weights in again changes things:

Housework_min =18.15 + 26.06*Female – 3.04*hh_child + 1.41*(Femalehh_child)

Female is significant (as is the constant) but the other terms are not.  This argues that there’s really no difference once you have a kid in how much housework you do if unmarried, either by gender or not.  It could be that there’s not enough unmarried fathers in the sample to say much of anything once the weights are added (perhaps they over-sample single dads, who knows!  Well, presumably ATUS knows.)  Also I should note that their sampling weights seem to be based on 2006 methodology, so if things have changed, they could be introducing measurement error which might tend to bias towards not finding anything.

All in all, there’s less significance with only the last two years of the data, but the story is still very similar.

So, to summarize:  Having kids increases the amount of housework that people do each day by 5-6 minutes on average, but about 1 minute for single-parent households.  On average, having kids means more housework for women and less housework for men.  However, in dual-parent married households with both spouses present, having a child increases rather than decreases the amount of time spent on housework for men.  In households with only one parent present, women do more housework and men do less (though with weighting it seems they both do less).  Potential reasons for this difference could be that men outsource the housework or that they’re more likely to substitute childcare for housework (or that they put their kids to work and women don’t!).

Now, the variable I used above assumes marriage.  It turns out there’s a variable in the ATUS that also gets at whether or not there’s an unmarried partner in the household.

tab spousepres

Spouse or unmarried partner in |
household |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
—————————————-+———————————–
1. Spouse present |     69,359       50.64       50.64
2. Unmarried partner present |      4,224        3.08       53.73
3. No spouse or unmarried partner prese |     63,377       46.27      100.00
—————————————-+———————————–
Total |    136,960      100.00

You would think that this shouldn’t change the results much.  Except it does.

. ttest  bls_hhact_hwork if spousepres==1 | spousepres==2, by(hh_child)

Two-sample t test with equal variances
——————————————————————————
Group |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
———+——————————————————————–

0. No |   30366    40.27857    .4782439    83.33803    39.34119    41.21595
1. Yes |   43217     46.9683    .4089027    85.00556    46.16684    47.76976
———+——————————————————————–
combined |   73583     44.2076    .3110836    84.38513    43.59788    44.81733
———+——————————————————————–
diff |           -6.689731    .6314013               -7.927276   -5.452187
——————————————————————————
diff = mean(0. No) – mean(1. Yes)                             t = -10.5951
Ho: diff = 0                                     degrees of freedom =    73581

Ha: diff < 0                 Ha: diff != 0                 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.0000         Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000          Pr(T > t) = 1.0000

Having a child when you have a partner in the house increases housework by 6.7 min.

For cohabiters it’s an increase of 12 min!

. ttest  bls_hhact_hwork if spousepres==2, by(hh_child)

Two-sample t test with equal variances
——————————————————————————
Group |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
———+——————————————————————–

0. No |    2112    33.51657    1.586618    72.91542    30.40507    36.62807
1. Yes |    2112    46.34943    1.895052    87.08996    42.63307     50.0658
———+——————————————————————–
combined |    4224      39.933    1.239569    80.56248    37.50279    42.36321
———+——————————————————————–
diff |           -12.83286    2.471554               -17.67841   -7.987314
——————————————————————————
diff = mean(0. No) – mean(1. Yes)                             t =  -5.1922
Ho: diff = 0                                     degrees of freedom =     4222

Ha: diff < 0                 Ha: diff != 0                 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.0000         Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000          Pr(T > t) = 1.0000

Married people spouse present:

Housework_min = 14.08 + 51.56*Female + 4.35*hh_child + 2.43*(Femalehh_child)

Everything significant at the 5% level.  (Results are similar with weighting)

Cohabiters:
Housework_min = 19.42 + 29.04*Female + 2.01*hh_child + 14.56*(Femalehh_child)
(results with weighting are pretty similar, with an even bigger interactive effect)

hh_child is not significant.  Note how much less housework cohabiting women do compared to married women!  (29.04 vs 51.56)  And look how much bigger that interaction of having a child is for cohabiting women– a child only adds 2.43 min (plus the 4.35 main effect that it adds to both parents) to married women, but it adds a full 14.56 minutes to cohabiting women (18.5 minutes in the weighted regression).  The story here is that cohabiters did less work and then were forced to be more traditional once a baby arrived.  With married women we’re probably seeing a lot of housewives increasing that female coeff.  There could also be differences in hiring out help between people who cohabit and people who are in more traditional marriages.  Or in how big the house/apartment is.  There are a lot of controls that could be put into these regressions (age, labor force status, etc.) if one wanted to try to get at causation instead of just the relationships.

Grumpy nation, how does this square with your experience, if applicable? And isn’t Stata awesome?