Men doing more; women doing less.

• Position: Housework

American men are doing about 16 hours of housework a week, up from 12 hours in 1965, according to a study by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR), Ann Arbor. The weekly housework hours of American women have declined sharply since 1965. Yet, they are still doing much more housework than men--about 27 hours a week.

The findings are part of a study of time-use trends in the U.S. and other industrialized nations. Researchers analyzed data from time-diaries, considered the most-accurate way to assess how people spend their time, supplementing the analysis with data from questionnaires asking men and women to recall how much time they spent on housework in an average week, including cooking, cleaning, and doing other chores around the house.

While the number of hours men reported spending on such work rose steadily from 1965 to 1985, the increase subsequently stalled. "This lack of recent growth in housework hours among men may reflect the strong labor market during the 1990s," suggests economist Frank Stafford, director of the ISR Panel Study of Income Dynamics. "`Vanishing housework' seems to be a result of the good job market for women as wall as men. But there's some reason to believe these low levels of housework will persist even in today's weaker job...