Who and How Pays for Help at Home? The Role of Labor Specialization, Self-Employment and Retirement

Abstract This paper investigates how household educational attainment and labor market specialization shape both expenditures on domestic services and the mode of hiring domestic workers. Using microdata from the Spanish Family Income Survey (2016–2023), we analyze the likelihood of hiring domestic help directly and formally, as well as the amounts spent on services and social security contributions. Our results show that educational level and occupational status are strong predictors of both domestic service expenditure and formal direct hiring. Households headed by self-employed individuals or those with university degrees are significantly more likely to outsource domestic work and spend considerably more when they do. These findings suggest that domestic service consumption reflects not only income or preferences, but also a reallocation of household labor, whereby specialized, highly skilled members substitute unpaid domestic tasks with market services.