The husband’s time allocation

continuous nature of the variable, a unit increase above the mean of 7.5 thousand

Egyptian pounds has a significant impact on the wife’s self-reported marital happiness. A one seventh increase in the annual earnings of a husband in the rural areas, increases the probability of a wife being in the ‘very happy’ category by 0.4 percentage points.

Therefore, model 1 concludes that regardless of the husbands’ labour market characteristics, no significant role in shaping the wives’ marital happiness is found.

6.6.2 The husband’s social network

Social networks have been explored using variables reflecting on the time spent with friends and trust in the surrounding networks. The impact of the number of

husbands’ friends on the wife’s marital happiness have been tested, however with no meaningful conclusions. As suggested earlier, the time the husband spends with friends matters more for the wife than how many friends the husband has. Therefore, the number of friends for the husband has been replaced by the time spent with friends. The estimated impact of both variables (the number and time spent with friends) yield an insignificant impact on the wives’ marital happiness.

6.6.3 The husband’s time allocation

Given the patriarchal nature of the Egyptian society, the husbands’ participation in the chores inside and outside the house is very low. Household chores are believed to be part of the job description of a wife. Therefore, the average number of hours per day spent by husbands on chores inside and outside the house is negligible (0.09 hours for domestic chores and 0.07 hours for out of the house chores). Looking beyond the average number of hours per day, 94.4% and 93.5% of husbands spend zero hours per day on domestic chores and out of the house chores, respectively.

However, controlling for the area of residency, as soon as the husband starts spending time on domestic chores, the marital happiness of the wives is negatively

affected. A one-hour increase in the husband’s domestic chores, reduces the probability of a wife being in the ‘very happy’ category by 2.2 percentage point.

The couples, with husbands’ participation in the domestic chores, have children and live alone. The wife mostly has a secondary education, not employed and spends an average of 1-10 hours daily on domestic chores. Moreover, 83% of those wives make their own decision regarding the use of their own money. The husbands, on the other hand, are mostly employed in the private sector, however, 50% of them spend zero hours on commuting (and the other 50% spend 1-2 hours). This shows that those husbands either work from home or work very close to where they live. About 87% of them spend zero hours with friends, even though they have between 1-10 friends. Moreover, 97% of these husbands have no trust in the surrounding community.

The issue of leisure time, being insignificant in determining wives’ happiness at marriage is explained by the breakdown of leisure time. Leisure time comprises active, passive and social activities, which are done individually, in parallel or together. Due to the broadness and collectiveness of the term, it appears to be insignificant. Active and passive leisure activities are forms of both individual and/or parallel activities; however, as previously discussed, social activities involve joint activities too. Social activities appear to positively and significantly impact wife’s marital happiness. This result is expected, since the individual and the parallel activities, characterizing the active and passive leisure, involve each spouse spending their leisure time on their own, either totally individual or each one spending the time separately while being present in the same place.

This emphasizes the fact the wives are more concerned with mutual relationships with the husband and this is what matters most for their marital happiness.

6.6.4 Robustness checks

Other variables have been used in the model estimation, results of which have not been reported, to ensure the robustness of the reported results. Husbands’ education, education level difference between the husband and the wife, husbands’ level of hygiene and husbands’ religiosity were added to the model, separately and collectively. The included variables were neither significant in determining the level of self-reported marital happiness for wives, nor did they contribute to the overall significance or explanatory power of the different models reported above.

The results confirm the view that the happiness of a wife in her marriage comes from within. The wife’s own view on things is what makes her happy in her marriage. On this note, it appears that what matters most for a wife is a mutual relationship with the husband. It doesn’t matter whether the husband is rich or not, employed or not, spends time with his friends or not.

6.7 Conclusion

This chapter has provided more depth to the previous chapter 5 and has confirmed some of the received wisdom around marriage in Egyptian society. Investigating the wife’s marital happiness is more conclusive when variables reflecting on the husband’s characteristics are added to the model. This analysis uses a sample of wives, whose husbands are available in the survey and the matching between them happens. This matching between the husband and the wife allows studying the impact of the husband’s characteristics on his own respective wife’s marital happiness.

Using the same ordinal dependant variable from the previous chapter’s analysis, an ordered probit model is used. The group of wives within the age of 15 and 29 are divided into two groups and CHOW test proves the validity and representativeness of the selected sample for analysis.

This chapter focussed attention on the impact of husbands’ labour market outcomes, his social network and his time use on his respective wife’s marital happiness. the analysis investigates the role for different labour market outcomes for the husband and concludes that husbands’ annual earnings is the only outcome that matters. The analysis, however, concludes that the impact of husbands’ annual earnings is more significant for the marital happiness of wives in the rural areas as opposed to the urban areas.

In addition, husbands’ participation in the household chores inside and outside the house have no significant impact on the wife’s marital happiness. similarly, husbands’

time allocated to leisure activities have no significant impact on a wife’s marital

happiness. the analysis however shows an exception where husband’s time allocated to social leisure activities has significant positive impact on wives’ marital happiness.

A final focus is the social networks of the husband, represented as the number of hours the husband spends with his friends as well as the level of trust the husband has in

the surrounding community. The social network variables both have insignificant impact on the wives’ marital happiness.

The findings of this paper concur with the hypothesized relationships that marital happiness for wives comes from how she views and evaluates her own life and

relationship with the husband, more than any external factors originating from the husband’s various activities.

Appendix E