Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

How married men and women in immigrant families allocate their time towards various daily activities provides a glimpse into the division of time investment in the assimilation process and whether these investments perpetuate traditional gender roles among immigrants from traditional societies. We use the American Time Use Survey for 2003-2014 to study if investments in assimilation activities in immigrant families are gendered and whether gender roles in source countries influence how married immigrants allocate their time towards assimilation and non-assimilation activities in the United States. We treat assimilation as an investment that immigrants make by allocating time to activities that involve interacting with natives and study time spent on activities that require a high degree of interaction with natives, namely: purchasing; education; work and work related activities; and time with non-family.

Our findings suggest a gendered pattern of time allocations with husbands spending more time on assimilation activities and wives spending more time on non-assimilation activities. This gendered pattern of assimilation implies wives’ dependence on their husbands in assimilation.

We find that immigrant men have more episodes of activities in which nonfamily members are present than native men; immigrant women have fewer episodes of activities in which nonfamily members are present than native-born women. Further, with more years of residency in the U.S. immigrant married men spend increasing amount of time with nonfamily, but there is no corresponding evidence in the time use pattern of immigrant married women. This latter finding suggests that time investment towards assimilation in immigrant families is largely carried out by men than women. We also find that an increase in the female-male labor participation ratio in the source country is accompanied by a narrowing of the gender gap in time spent on household chores, caring for children and adults, work and work related activities, and time spent with family members, suggesting that gender roles in sending countries can hinder or contribute to the assimilation of immigrant women.