The line graphs show the percentage of households who owned three types of electrical appliances and how much time they spent on house-chores in a week from 1920 to 2019. Overall, the proportion of households with these appliances grew over the years, with those for refrigerator and vacuum cleaner seeing the biggest changes. Additionally, there seems to be a correlation between the ownership of those devices and how mich time was allocated to doing house-chores as people spent increasingly less time doing house-chores by 2019.
The figures for refrigerator and vacuum cleaner ownership exhibited similar changes. In 1920, 30% of households had vacuum cleaners, considerably more than those who owned refrigerators, with around 2%. This disparity, however, became less pronounced by 1960, as the figure for the former reached 70% and the latter rose to 90%. The figures continued their trajectory into 2000s, when they both hit their peaks of 100% and remained stable for the rest of the period.
The proportion of households with a washing machine, on the other hand, bucked the trend somewhat. Starting at 40%, it experienced a noticeable increase to 70% in 1960. Despite falling to about 65% in 1980, it staged a recovery to approximately 75% by 2019.
In contrast, the number of hours spent completing house-chores saw consistent falls. In 1920, people allocated a staggering 50 hours a week for these activities, a figure that then dropped to 35 hours in 1940 and then to 20 in 1960. After a minimal decline to 15 hours in 2000, the figure hit its chart low of just 10 hours in the final year.