The increasing division and specialization of labor between the market and the nonmarket sector is a central stylized fact of long run economic development. Over time, a large share of activities which had formerly been carried out by the private household itself has become replaced by market alternatives, raising at the same time the demand for consumer goods.

The neoclassical economic framework of household production theory relates the increasing demand for household technology to rising wages and opportunity costs of time: the higher the wage rate, the more costly it is to spend...