Research Paper No. 325 | Switching Roles: Gender differences in time use and mental health in Ghana

We explore the association between domestic labor and psychological distress among women and men in Ghana. A growing body of literature has recently focused on the relationship between time use and mental health, uncovering a negative association between women’s mental health and domestic labor. This work contributes to the literature by i) focusing on the number of activities, rather than the amount of time, ii) including both women and men, while most studies focus only on women. We use the second and third waves of the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSPS). We find that a higher number of domestic activities is associated with a higher psychological distress. For women the effect is driven mainly by care activities, while for men by both domestic and care activities. We posit that the relevant mechanism is the effort required to switch from one activity to another, and from one role to another.