Togetherness in the household

Spending time together with a spouse is a major gain from marriage. We extend the classical collective model of the household to allow for togetherness between spouses. Togetherness takes the form of joint leisure and joint care for children. Using revealed preferences conditions and Dutch data over years 2009–12, we find that households are willing to pay 1.2 euro per hour—10% of the average wage—to convert private leisure to joint, and 2.1 euro per hour to convert private childcare to joint. Our results suggest togetherness is an important component of household time use despite being overlooked in the economics literature.