Wives have spouses to thank for extra chores, study finds

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new University of Michigan study concludes that having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women.

For men, it's the opposite: A wife saves her husband about an hour of housework a week, the national study says.

The housework-trend findings were based on time diaries. Researchers looked at a 10-year span of data from the study, which began in 1968 at Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

The seven extra hours of work emerged by comparing the amount of housework done by single women to that of married women.

But Frank Stafford, an economist with the Institute for Social Research, said the findings also shine some light on older stereotypes about who does the housework and how much.

Men are doing more than twice as much housework as 20 years ago but fall short of women's workload, which has dropped, the study says.

In 1976, U.S. women did an average of 26 hours of housework a week, compared with 17 hours in 2005.

Men did about six hours of housework a week in 1976, compared with about 13 hours in 2005.