Time allocation within the Family: Welfare implications of life in a couple *

A collective model of leisure demand, generalised to the production of a household public good, is estimated on the British Household Panel Survey. The sharing rule is identified by using an original parametric framework based on the change of family status: from single‐living to couple or from couple to single‐living. Womens’ ratios of private household expenditures are 40% on average. The level of intra‐household inequality appears highly dependent on the intra‐household wage gap. Omitting household production in the model would overestimate the ratio by 7 percentage points on average.