TIME USE SURVEYS AND GENDER INEQUALITY

Author: Santosh Nandal

Women constitute half of the population, perform nearly two-third of work and earn one-hundredth of income. Existence of gender disparity is a potential threat for economy. Gender disparities adversely affect the average achievement level of a State or country, measured by human development index (HDI), in respect of some basic parameters (namely, life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, enrolment ratios and per capita gross domestic product). In India gender disparities do not exist in large measure reflected in the behaviour of these parameters between males and females. India has witnessed gender inequality from its early history due to its socio-economic and religious practices that resulted in a wide gap between the position of men and women in the society.Existence of gender disparity is a potential threat for economy. Gender disparities adversely affect the average achievement level of a State or country, measured by human development index (HDI), in respect of some basic parameters (namely, life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, enrolment ratios and per capita gross domestic product). In India gender disparities do not exist in large measure reflected in the behaviour of these parameters between males and females.

Women’s differential access to healthcare, education, employment, decision making, power and control of resources is central to discrimination in all institutional spheres, i.e. the household, community, market, and state. Even the Economic Survey (2011-12) has emphasized that much needs to be done to reduce gender inequality in India. Women’s economic empowerment is fundamental to strengthen women’s rights and enabling women to have control over their lives and exert influence in society and to reduce gender discrimination. The present paper is intended to throw light on the reduction of gender discrimination through economic empowerment of women.

Determinants of housework in Brazil: a study based on data from The National Household Sample Survey (PNAD)

Author: Pinheiro Luana

The aim of this work is to analyze the involvement and working hours of married men and women in unpaid household labour in Brazil. In order to perform such analysis, data from The National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) led by The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) was used to cover a period of 15 years (2001-2015). Collected data showed a phenomenon of gender convergence, in both involvement and working hours in domestic chores, with a significant reduction of gender inequality during the course of the years. However, this does not mean that there was a redistribution of domestic chores. Although there was an increase in the percentage of men doing unpaid work, the number of hours that are spent doing such activities remained the same throughout the years analyzed. Furthermore, the permanent female responsibility for housework in a context that women also go out to work, suggests that women always work longer hours than men and that the gender division of work in Brazil is unequal. In this context, we aimed to identify what factors contribute to the different commitment to housework seen between the two genders. Our results suggests that although several theoretical approaches could explain what is seen in Brazil, the validity of norms and the traditional gender roles can better explain the involvement of both genders in unpaid work. A few factors that exemplify this theoretical approach are: i) sex is the most important independent variable to explain the participation and reproductive journey of Brazilian couples; ii) the goodness-of-fit of regression models as well as constant terms are always higher for women than men; iii) the majority of gender inequality at household labour work is due to non-observable factors – or “gender term” – instead of observable factors; iv) at least for women, gender norms can subvert the assumption of bargain theory and the perspective of gender display is valid; on the other hand, for the majority of men, the economic exchange theory makes more sense; and v) gender interferes in how all the theoretical approaches can determine housework, as both women’s involvement and time spent at unpaid work are more sensible to the explanatory variables than what is seen for men

Time Use, Unemployment, and Well-Being: An Empirical Analysis Using British Time-Use Data

Author: Andreas Knabe
Contributing author(s): Thi Truong An Hoang

We use nationally representative data from the UK Time-Use Survey 2014/2015 to investigate how a person’s employment status is related to time use and cognitive and affective dimensions of subjective well-being. We find that unemployed persons report substantially lower levels of life satisfaction than employed persons. When looking at specific types of activities, the unemployed enjoy most of the activities they engage in less than the employed. However, the employed consider working to be one of the least enjoyable activities. They also spend a large share of their time at work and with work-related activities, while the unemployed spend more time on leisure and more enjoyable activities instead. When looking at duration-weighted average affective well-being over the day, our results suggest that the benefit of having to spend less time at work outweighs the negative emotional effect of unemployment during leisure episodes, such that the unemployed experience, on average, more enjoyment during the day than the employed.

Change and Continuity in Housework: U.S. Men and Women

Author: Frank Stafford
Contributing author(s): Susan Li

Change and Continuity in Housework: U.S. Men and Women

            

                        Ping Li                                   Frank P. Stafford

  Economics and Management College      Department of Economics

    South China Normal University             Institute for Social Research

     Guangzhou University Town                   University of Michigan

     Guangzhou 510006 P R China                  Ann Arbor, Michigan

                                                                            48106 U S A

     

        liping@umich.edu                                   fstaffor@umich.edu

 

                                             February  2019

                                 

                                               ABSTRACT

 

    Prior research shows a decline in housework to be greater than the increase in market work for women, 1965-1981, and men also experienced a decline in total work with an increase in housework less than the decline in market work. For some with commitments to both career and family there is a ‘time squeeze’. This was most notable for women with young children in the 1970’s with reduced sleep and leisure as an adjustment margin. Since 1983 there has been some reduction in total work time for married women active in the labor market (age 30-55) at both 50th and 75th quartile points and the 90th percentile. However, labor force participation rates have increased, implying a greater overall time commitment to work even as housework has declined.  We interpret these secular changes in housework in relation to the dramatic shift to market work by women as shaped by reduced exclusion from a wide range of market occupations and, more recently, accentuated by the growth patterns as shaped by information technology. For married men active in the labor market, 2003-2013, total work hours remained largely unchanged at all percentile points. As an indicator of future housework patterns, time diary measures are used to assess housework time for teen age boys and girls. As of 2002 the girls devoted about 40 minutes per day and the boys about 20 minutes. By 2014 both devoted about 30 minutes per day.

Change and Continuity in Housework: U.S. Men and Women

Author: Frank Stafford
Contributing author(s): Susan Li

Change and Continuity in Housework: U.S. Men and Women

            

                        Ping Li                                   Frank P. Stafford

  Economics and Management College      Department of Economics

    South China Normal University             Institute for Social Research

     Guangzhou University Town                   University of Michigan

     Guangzhou 510006 P R China                  Ann Arbor, Michigan

                                                                            48106 U S A

     

        liping@umich.edu                                   fstaffor@umich.edu

 

                                             February  2019

                                 

                                               ABSTRACT

 

    Prior research shows a decline in housework to be greater than the increase in market work for women, 1965-1981, and men also experienced a decline in total work with an increase in housework less than the decline in market work. For some with commitments to both career and family there is a ‘time squeeze’. This was most notable for women with young children in the 1970’s with reduced sleep and leisure as an adjustment margin. Since 1983 there has been some reduction in total work time for married women active in the labor market (age 30-55) at both 50th and 75th quartile points and the 90th percentile. However, labor force participation rates have increased, implying a greater overall time commitment to work even as housework has declined.  We interpret these secular changes in housework in relation to the dramatic shift to market work by women as shaped by reduced exclusion from a wide range of market occupations and, more recently, accentuated by the growth patterns as shaped by information technology. For married men active in the labor market, 2003-2013, total work hours remained largely unchanged at all percentile points. As an indicator of future housework patterns, time diary measures are used to assess housework time for teen age boys and girls. As of 2002 the girls devoted about 40 minutes per day and the boys about 20 minutes. By 2014 both devoted about 30 minutes per day.

Change aned Continuity in Housework: U.S. Men and Women

Author: Frank Stafford
Contributing author(s): Susan Lee

Change and Continuity in Housework: U.S. Men and Women

            

                        Ping Li                                   Frank P. Stafford

  Economics and Management College      Department of Economics

    South China Normal University             Institute for Social Research

     Guangzhou University Town                   University of Michigan

     Guangzhou 510006 P R China                  Ann Arbor, Michigan

                                                                            48106 U S A

     

        liping@umich.edu                                   fstaffor@umich.edu

 

                                             February  2019

                                 

                                               ABSTRACT

 

    Prior research shows a decline in housework to be greater than the increase in market work for women, 1965-1981, and men also experienced a decline in total work with an increase in housework less than the decline in market work. For some with commitments to both career and family there is a ‘time squeeze’. This was most notable for women with young children in the 1970’s with reduced sleep and leisure as an adjustment margin. Since 1983 there has been some reduction in total work time for married women active in the labor market (age 30-55) at both 50th and 75th quartile points and the 90th percentile. However, labor force participation rates have increased, implying a greater overall time commitment to work even as housework has declined.  We interpret these secular changes in housework in relation to the dramatic shift to market work by women as shaped by reduced exclusion from a wide range of market occupations and, more recently, accentuated by the growth patterns as shaped by information technology. For married men active in the labor market, 2003-2013, total work hours remained largely unchanged at all percentile points. As an indicator of future housework patterns, time diary measures are used to assess housework time for teen age boys and girls. As of 2002 the girls devoted about 40 minutes per day and the boys about 20 minutes. By 2014 both devoted about 30 minutes per day.

The Earned Income Tax Credit and Health: Examining Time Use as a Mechanism

Author: Mariam Khan
Contributing author(s): Taryn Morrissey, American University, USA

A growing body of literature has found the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), one of the largest anti-poverty programs in the United States, to improve the health of EITC recipients and their children. It is possible that change in in the amount of time that recipients spend in health-related activities may underlie EITC’s health benefits. However, such a mechanism has yet to be explored in the literature. This study examines whether the receipt of ETIC refunds has short-term effects on the time engaged in health-related behaviors. This includes the time engaged in both health-promoting behaviors, such as sleeping, exercising, and receiving health care services, and health-risk behaviors, such as TV watching and tobacco and drug usage. Using data from 2003 to 2017 American Time Use Survey – Current Population Survey (ATUS-CPS), this study employs a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the intent-to-treat effect the timing of the EITC refund receipt. Specifically, we exploit the timing of receipt of tax refunds, comparing the time usage of EITC-receiving and non-receiving respondents in February and March, months during which EITC recipients are likely to receive their tax refunds, to their time usage during other months of the year. Preliminary results find that during tax time, EITC-eligible respondents spent more time on any health-related self care but less time sleeping, compared to non-eligible respondents. Heterogeneity by respondent gender and marital status was tested. In the months of likely receipt of EITC refunds, male EITC-eligible respondents spent less time sleeping relative to their non-receiving counterparts. Additionally, unmarried respondents spent less time sleeping whereas married respondents spent more time relaxing and engaging in health-related self care. Implications for policy and research are discussed.

Widening the Gap? Temperature and Time Allocation between Men and Women

Author: Yang Jiao
Contributing author(s): Yixuan Li, Mengdi Liu

Annual average temperature has increased by more than 1.2°F over the period 1986–2016. Climate change has affected economic conditions globally, with wide-ranging implications for economic growth, productivity, public health, and ecological function. Recent work has shown that local climate affects the growth rate of national economies, labor supply, agricultural production, and natural systems. Nevertheless, the question of whether climate change influences men and women differently is under researched. This paper examines how men and women allocate their time between work, home production and leisure in response to the changes in temperature. We base our analysis on the 2004-2007 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data. We discover an inverted U-shaped relation between hours worked and temperature for male workers and they reduce their work hours when temperature falls below 35 or rises above 90°F. Relative to men, the labor supply of women is less elastic to the changes in temperature. However, female workers reduce their time at work substantially in days of extremely high temperature (over 95°F). Most of the forgone working hours are added to personal leisure for both men and women as time allocated to leisure for both men and women exhibit a U-shaped relation with temperature. Moreover, the time spent on housework is not responsive to temperature increases, compared to the time allocated to other activities. Our further investigation suggest that gender difference in time allocation largely depends on the work environment, the flexibility of working schedules and family responsibility.

Time as a Zero-Sum Game

Author: William Michelson

Early theoretical work on time-use by Zahari Staikov established that time is a zero-sum game.  Everybody gets the same ration of 24 hours a day to use in whatever way is possible and/or desirable.  Time spent on one activity potentially restricts time available for others.

What has not been documented explicitly is the extent that the aggregate of time devoted to one or more activities is statistically related to more or less time in the day accorded to particular other activities, i.e. established trade-offs.  This paper uses the logic of correlational analysis to assess the extent that time in the day devoted to particular activities is systematically associated with doing more or less of other specific activities - and whether any such patterns are positively or negatively perceived subjectively - and, if so, whether regarding immediate or long-term perceptions of impact.

Only one major category of time-use is associated with significant amounts of time traded away from nearly every other type of major activity.  This is time spent in paid employment - and applicable to men and women alike.  Although the distribution of paid work has changed in recent decades, correlation matrices from Statistics Canada's General Social Surveys of time-use in 1992, 2005, and 2015 indicate the same trade-offs of paid work duration with nearly all other major activities.  The subjective impact of increased time so spent is micro - pertaining to feelings of stress encountered during the day - but not to macro feelings about life as a whole (e.g. happiness and life satisfaction).  The importance of the micro measure of time crunch, established by John Robinson and now utilized widely, is substantiated in the empirical comparison of subjective measures in this context from the several Canadian general social surveys of time use in which this comparison can be made. 

Contrary to expectations, travel time in the day is not significantly related to work time, nor to micro time crunch, because much travel time is for non-work purposes.

 

Gender Inequality in Care and Domestic Work Measuring the Well Being Index of Women in Punjab.

Author: harpreet kaur
Contributing author(s): Gurjinder Singh

 

Women worldwide perform the vast majority of domestic tasks, including both household maintenance and childcare, even when they are employed part or full time, the mean time spent on unpaid care work by women is more than twice that for men. But the latter largely goes unreported in the accounting framework of System of National Accounts (SNA) even though the households derive significant amount of utility from these activities. In today’s world importance of anything is measured in terms of money. The worth of work is judged from the payment made for it. Looking in this lens, the unpaid work is not productive, or say has no worth because it is not paid for so access to paid work is essential for the economic and social independence of women because it enables her to make better decisions about her security, safety, carrier, her health and overall wellbeing. When women participate in the formal paid economy, they suffer from several disadvantages, such as, carrying the extra burden of domestic responsibilities, poor human capital for the formal labour market, inferior status and poor prospects of getting good jobs in the core sector as well as poor upward mobility due to the burden of domestic responsibilities as a result, women may suffer from “time poverty. Moreover, the labour force participation rate of the women or say, their participation in paid activities, mainly depends upon the time spent in the domestic responsibilities.

 

In this paper we attempt to shed light to give visibility to unpaid work in formal statistics, to understand the linkages between paid and unpaid work, and to integrate the monetary value of unpaid work in System of National Accounts in such a way that gender equity and LFPR is not sacrificed, for this purpose we study the time use survey of Punjab and use the well being index to show the effect of domestic work and care activities on the well being of women and also show the time poverty among the women because of the burden of unpaid care and domestic  work also calculate the subjective well being of women.

 

Mr

Author: Hoxhaj Rezart
Contributing author(s): Nicola D. Coniglio ; Hubert Jayet

Economic research on immigrants’ behavior and performance has focused almost exclusively on outcomes (monetary such as wages, income, remittances and non-monetary such as crime rates and educational attainments) leaving in the shadow the analysis of the process which leads to such outcomes.

The recent availability of individuals’ time-use data has allowed researchers to shed lights on the process of time allocation across different market and non-market activities.

In this work we study the allocation of time devoted to informal learning and education, i.e. those activities carried out during leisure time and outside formal training courses which boost individuals’ human capital. For immigrants the private investment in these activities is likely to have relevant external effects as informal learning and education enhances the likelihood of greater socio-economic integration in the host society.

We first develop a simple theoretical framework, which allows us to highlight the different constrains/opportunity costs faced by immigrants as compared with natives. Then, we empirically investigate the determinants of participation in informal education using the American Time Use Data (ATUS; period 2003-2015) which contains detailed information on daily time budgets of a large sample of immigrants and natives in the US. Consistently with a theoretical model of time allocation with fixed participation costs and heterogeneous returns to informal education we find evidence that immigrants are more likely to engage in informal education and, conditionally on participation, they allocate more time to these activities. Over time, immigrants show a higher degree of assimilation into the host society. Our results also highlight heterogeneous patterns across gender and ethnic groups.

Alone but not Lonely: Companionship Patterns and Well-Being Among Adolescents With and Without Siblings

Author: Jocelyn Wikle
Contributing author(s): Elizabeth Ackert, Alexander Jensen

This study contributes to long-standing debates over only children versus children with siblings by comparing companionship patterns and well-being among adolescents with and without siblings in the home. The sibling socialization literature suggests that children who don’t have natural sibling interactions may be at a disadvantage, spending more time alone and experiencing worse well-being in time alone and in social interactions. On the other hand, theories positing a quantity-quality trade-off with increasing family size (i.e., resource dilution) suggest that parents may find ways to ensure that only children are not alone too often, and that only children may have higher quality social interactions with parents, peers and other adults than children with siblings. Using a large, nationally representative data sample of adolescents from the American Time Use Survey (N = 6,177), this study shows that only children spend more time alone than children with siblings, but also more one-on-one time with parents. Additionally, only children are less stressed when they spend time alone and have less negative feelings when spending time with peers, but have less meaningful interactions with other non-household adults than do children with siblings. Relative to children with siblings, only children may be more well-adapted to spending time alone as well as with peers in their lives.

Growing up in Belgium: social stratification in time-use of adolescents

Author: Julie Verbeylen
Contributing author(s): Ignace Glorieux

Time spent with children is an important aspect of modern-day parenting. Researchers have noted that increases in parental education and declining family sizes have changed children’s wellbeing for the better, with affective relationships becoming more central. There are a number of reasons why time spent with children is valued by parents and those reasons are mostly linked to children’s wellbeing. Shared time is a convenient way to teach children the appropriate values and attitudes, it promotes the child’s intellectual and psychological development and it stimulates cohesion among the family members. The choices and investments (in both money and time) that parents make in the childrearing process are closely linked to their social background. Both national and international studies suggest that children from working class and poor parents are less often participating in organized leisure activities and have rather long stretches of unsupervised time than children from working class families. 

 

Not only leisure activities can be shaped by parental characteristics. Sleeping habits, eating with family members, doing homework and taking part in household chores are very likely influenced by class-based differences as well. Therefore, this presentation focuses on the overall pattern of daily activities as they are performed by teenagers. For this we make a distinction between children’s productive time (including studying, helping in the household, caring for younger siblings, teen employment), reproductive time (sleeping, eating) and leisure time (organized leisure activities, television, playing outside, after-school time, shared leisure). For our analyses we use the Belgian TUS data of 1999, 2005 and 2013. The pooled dataset contains time-use dairies of 2.356 Belgian adolescents. 

Our dear children: gender division of market and household production and transfers in the low-fertility environment: example of Poland

Author: Agnieszka Chlon-Dominczak

The gender division of market and household work remains unequal across the world. This is related in particular to childcare responsibilities. Therefore, reconciliation of work and family lives and broader engagement of women on the labor market is a challenge.

The article shows, by application of national transfer accounts and national time transfer accounts approach that low number of children does not lead to less time spent on childcare by parents, but results in higher consumption of childcare time per child. Therefore, the supply of women’s work on the market is not increased (as could be expected).  

This means that shrinking labor force due to the declining working age population can only to a limited extent be compensated by higher employment of women, unless further progress to equalize gender roles not only on the labor market, but also at the household level. Furthermore, unequal division of household and labor market production between men and women has long-term consequences. Women at older ages receive private transfers that are needed to finance their consumption needs. 

 

Disability and Patterns of Leisure Participation across the Life Course

Author: Carrie Shandra

I use nationally representative data from the Well-Being Module of the American Time Use Survey (N = 60,071) to examine: (1) how the presence of a sensory, cognitive, physical, or multiple disability associates with participation in six types of leisure activities (passive, civic, hobby, arts, active, and social), and (2) if these patterns are conditional on age. Net of sociodemographic characteristics and self-rated health, people with disabilities spend more time in passive forms—and less time in active forms—of leisure. Older adults with disabilities are more susceptible to disengaged leisure time, compared both to those without disability and to younger adults with disability. However, differences in predicted minutes by disability status are significantly larger for adults of prime working ages than those who are younger or older. Results suggest that—in the context of leisure—disability is not equally experienced across the life course.

Cost of unpaid domestic work in Senegal

Author: Latif DRAMANI
Contributing author(s): Edem Akpo, Oumy Laye

With more than half of the total population and 52% of the population potentially active, women constitute a decisive segment in the dynamization of the economy in Senegal.

However, analysis of the participation rate by sex shows that activity is significantly less important for women. It is estimated at 33.4% against 69.0% for men. This is due to the high proportion of women in the inactive population, ie 43.8% of the total inactive population and 25% of the female population. These women spend most of their time doing domestic work (cooking, ironing, child care, assistance to the elderly, etc.) that are not considered productive economic activities.

In the economic literature over the past several years many economists have insisted that ignoring the income and wealth generated by domestic work leads to distortions in the assessment of certain macroeconomic variables. According to Chadeau (1992), economists like Kuznets (1944) and Clark (1958) underlined that the non-recognition of income in kind generated by productive activity of households underestimates the national income. Boserup (1983) noted that it makes GDP less relevant for comparing the income level of countries and thus welfare particularly in the Third World countries. Another issue is the generational competition between men and women, particularly generational equity between girls and boys.

In Senegal, the National Time Transfer Account (NTTA) method was used to measure time spent on domestic activities. The results reveal that women spend about seven times as much time as men on unpaid domestic work in 2011. On average, men spend 30mn/day on domestic work while women spend on average more than 3h/day. The monetary valuation of domestic work is estimated at about 28.3% of GDP in 2011. The gender breakdown shows that domestic work for women and men is estimated at 19.1% and 9.2% of GDP, respectively. The results also illustrate that cooking, shopping and child / senior care are the most representative activities. They represent 4.7%, 4.3% and 11.2% of GDP respectively over the same period.

Life Cycle Deficit Financing and Generational Equity: Evidence for Senegal

Author: Latif DRAMANI
Contributing author(s): Oumy Ndiaye, Edem Akpo, Mamaye Thionguane

This article focuses on the life cycle deficit and the different mechanisms of its financing. It proposes to consolidate the gains and explore new avenues to sustain the financing system of the life cycle deficit in Senegal.

Intergenerational transfers highlight the notion of the economic life cycle deficit and raise the question of its financing. Therefore, intergenerational equity is a central issue, especially in a country which is at the beginning of its demographic transition.

The results we obtained using the NTA and NTTA methodology highlight complex mechanisms of intergenerational transfers between men and women.

Gender Inequality and Unpaid Care Work in Malaysia: A Pilot Time Use Study and Care Policies

Author: Christopher Choong Weng Wai

Time use survey (TUS) is not a systematic and regular feature of Malaysia’s national statistical system. The first and only nationally representative TUS in Malaysia was conducted in 2003 and the data is not publicly available. As a result, research on the relationship between non-market and market activities – especially the impact of unpaid care work on gender gaps in the labour market – is limited and cannot be empirically grounded. To address this issue and revive interest in TUS, we have conducted a small-scale TUS in the national capital of Malaysia. The pilot study, albeit small in sample size, gives an important, updated snapshot of non-market activities in urban Malaysia as well as bridge the missing link between market and non-market spheres. Our paper presents the preliminary findings and results from the pilot study. It is embedded in the narrative of a ‘care hypothesis’ where unpaid care work is hypothesized to contribute to gendered life-cycle patterns in the labour market. The paper is structured as follows: first, we analyse trends and patterns in gender gaps and care work using official statistics – with emphasis on the city-level spatial scale where feasible; second, we investigate the TUS data collected as a case study to deepen insights on the care hypothesis and potentially proffer new ways of demarcating life-cycle phases; and third, we discuss policy implications and considerations. The paper, together with the TUS data collected, is instrumental in furthering understanding of unpaid care work within households and serves as an important tool in advancing discussion with policy makers on the feasibility of having TUS as an apparatus within the national statistical system.

Food Work in German Families and How it Relates to Time Use and Everyday Life

Author: Nina Kluender

The increasing employment rate of women, especially mothers, in Germany is resulting in the expansion of all-day care, including lunch, for children and subsequent changes in everyday family life. This leads to the central research question: how do working parents in two-parent households organize the food work in their families?

To answer this question a mixed methods approach with a qualitative enhanced design was used. In the first step, the daily time use for food work was analyzed from secondary data from the representative German time use survey of 2012/2013 and compared with the time use survey of 2001/2002. Three types of couples with different labor participation characteristics were defined to reflect the typical working time allocations in Germany: dual-earner couples, couples with additional female income and male-breadwinner couples. A linear mixed model (two level model) was used to include repeated measurements over three days. For a more detailed analysis, the quantitative results were examined in detail together with eight guideline-based interviews with working mothers on food work in their families.

The key findings of the quantitative analysis are that the higher the mother's employment rate is, the less time they spend on food work. Overall, mothers spend more than twice as much time on meal preparation daily than their partners, regardless of their participation in the labor force. Since 2001/2002 mothers have reduced their daily time use for both meal preparation and eating and drinking. The biggest time savings are seen with mothers in double-income couples. However, the family's everyday life is characterized by a three to four meal rhythm. The family meals take place in the evenings on weekdays and at breakfast over the weekends.

Overall, organizing the food work remains an emotional task, especially among mothers with vocational training in rural areas. These mothers report feeling guilty when their children eat at kindergarten or school. In addition, food work may be understood as care work (“cooking as caring”) and mothers find themselves in a position of tension between being a “good” mother and a working woman.

Where U.S. workers perform their jobs and how this has changed in the early years of the 21st century

Author: Rachel Krantz-Kent

In recent years, technological advances have provided some workers with flexibility in where they can perform their jobs. Advances in communication allow people to reach their colleagues and clients by phone, e-mail, or text from nearly anywhere, and at all hours of the day. The development and expansion of secure computer networks, cloud computing, and wireless connections facilitate additional flexibility in where and when work can be done. Coinciding with these changes, many employers have implemented policies that allow their staffs to work from home or other locations beyond their traditional workplaces, at least occasionally.

I use American Time Use Survey data to examine where workers, especially those employed in Management, Professional, and Related (MPR) occupations, performed their jobs and how this has changed in the early years of the 21st century. The data show that most workers performed their jobs at their workplaces. However, comparing the periods 2003-07 to 2013-17, there are some observable differences in where MPR workers performed their jobs. In the latter period, MPR workers were more likely to work at home and less likely to work at their workplaces compared with the earlier period, whereas there was little change in where people employed in other occupations performed their work.

I next focus on MPR workers in the period 2013-17. Their average work time per day varied depending on where they performed their work, with those who worked only at home working the shortest average duration and those who worked at both their workplace and at home working the longest average duration. MPR workers were less likely to work at their workplaces and more likely to work at their homes on weekend days than on weekdays. Additionally, MPR workers who spent time working at home on weekend days worked for a shorter average duration than those who spent time working at home on weekdays. I conclude by identifying specific MPR occupations and the likelihood of workers in those occupations working only at their workplaces on days they worked.

Time use of U.S. Millennials and Non-Millennials

Author: Michelle Freeman

 

Researchers have long studied characteristics and the forces that shape different generations. In recent years, U.S. Millennials are often the centerpiece of any discussion regarding generations. In light of this interest, I use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to examine how Millennials and non-Millennials spent their time on an average day in 2017. Millennials are defined as individuals born between 1981 and 1996, or those ages 21 to 36 in 2017. Non-Millennials are defined as individuals ages 37 and over in 2017. Non-Millennials include members of Generation X, Baby Boomers, the Silent Generation, and the Greatest Generation. I examined selected characteristics of Millennials and non-Millennials such as race and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, employment status, educational attainment, school enrollment, usual weekly earnings, marital status, and the percentage of each generation with children living at home. The demographic observations revealed that U.S. Millennials were more likely to be ethnically Hispanic or Latino, and more evenly comprise men and women than non-Millennials, who were slightly more likely to be women. Millennials were more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher compared with non-Millennials; however, Millennials earned less than non-Millennials on average. Millennials spent more time working, providing childcare, and in educational activities compared with non-Millennials in 2017. Millennials also spent less time doing household activities; organizational, civic, and religious activities; and leisure and sports activities than did non-Millennials on average. Time use varies greatly by life stage – whether one is retired, raising young children, or employed. These factors account for many of the differences in how U.S. Millennials and non-Millennials spent their time in 2017.

 

Keywords: ATUS, Millennials, generations, time use

 

Creating a feasible platform for 21st century time use data collection in the UK

Author: Christopher Payne

The rapid expansion of digital services has emphasized the limits of statistical measures of economic growth to accurately portray changes in living standards. There are now many digital platforms which allow individuals to consume or produce more free services than was possible in a pre-digital age and this has had real benefits for consumers which are very hard to measure, while it may also have had negative impacts on different parts of society. Unpaid service production and consumption is not something new, but there has recently been a renewed interest in better measurement of it (For example, Stiglitz, Sen, Fitoussi, 2009; Bean, 2016). Ultimately, the current status quo measurement of economic growth is often billed as an approximation for living standards - GDP goes up, living standards follow. The reality is, that the lack of capacity within the System of National Accounts framework (SNA, 2008) to effectively measure the quantity and quality of total services consumed (at zero extra cost such as watching an extra movie on a subscription film service, or consumption of services totally unpaid for, such as unpaid household services like cooking or cleaning) implies we need to look beyond standard measures of consumption to capture time spent on zero-additional-cost activities. A modernised online time use survey allows a platform for the complete measurement of economic production and consumption, creating better measurement of welfare through quality adjusted measures of time, as proposed by Professor Jonathan Gershuny (2000) in his book ‘Changing times’. Time use data’s propensity for unbiased activity recall also facilitates a better measurement of the impacts of digital service provision on people's wider well-being. That could include time-use measures of digital services impact on happiness and anxiety, or time-use measures of social capital when the time-use data is supplemented with further information. The online diary has a range of ways it can be customised in real time depending on respondent’s answers and this allows new functionality over a traditional paper diary instrument. Another benefit is that data for some fields, for example, location co-presence and possibly some activity data, can be collected or enhanced using data science techniques, allowing the diary to solely focus on collection of other data fields. In 2019, the ONS engaged in a work programme to develop a modernised online light diary approach to time use data collection. This talk shall outline some of the results of the development of the new tool, and the activities considered relevant for capturing digital service provision, discuss results of user testing, show how the data collected will be used to develop measurement of economic and wider welfare, and finish with what the ONS plans next for the programme, and it’s goal to modernise economic data collection for the 21st century in the UK.

Couple Togetherness during Encore Adulthood: Evidence from Sweden

Author: Jeff Jeffrey Neilson
Contributing author(s): Maria Stanfors

Couples’ shared time is an important correlate of marital quality and happiness. Time use studies which have examined spousal/couple togetherness are few, and those which exist have focused primarily on work-family conflict among partnered men and women with children. Much less studied has been couples’ shared time for those in encore adulthood (ages 45-74), the majority of whom are no longer raising young children, but are progressing through other life stages, including transitioning into retirement. In this paper we investigate how coupled men and women aged 45-74 spend time together in Sweden 2000/01 and 2010/11, paying particular attention to differences which occur when one, or both partners, have retired from the labor market. We use time diary data from the nationally-representative 2000/01 and 2010/11 Swedish Time Use Survey (SWETUS) for 5,160 partnered adults aged 45-74 years, using co-presence data to examine partner togetherness overall and within certain activities, as well as time spent alone. Multivariate results indicate that togetherness increases gradually with age, yet certain life transitions, such as retirement, and having an adult child within the household, have large effects on couples’ time together. Higher ages are associated with more time alone, and less time with others from outside the household. Being retired, and having a retired partner, is associated with increased amounts of time coupled men and women spend together, especially one-on-one time. This extra partner time is spent primarily in a variety of shared leisure activities. We find evidence that partner togetherness has increased between 2000 and 2010 for retired couples, but not for those still working. Our findings illustrate how certain demographic changes in recent decades, such as delayed childbearing, can reduce spousal togetherness during the encore years, whereas higher life expectancy increases couples time together and reduces alone time at these ages.  

Night Sleep Disruptions in Canada and Sweden

Author: Jeff Jeffrey Neilson

Disruptive night sleep can have myriad health implications in both the short- and long-term. A limited number of studies have shown that disruptive night sleep due to caregiving of children is disproportionally experienced by women, although the majority of these studies have utilized non-nationally representative samples. To date, no studies have examined gender differences in disruptive night sleep in a cross-country comparative perspective using nationally-representative data. This paper fills this gap by using time use data from Canada (General Social Survey of Canada 2010) and Sweden (Swedish Time Use Survey 2010/11). It also contributes to the related literature by differentiating between disruptive night sleep due to childcare, and non-childcare related factors, which is made possible due to the episodic nature of time diary data. Multivariate analyses examined night sleep disruptions among the working aged population (25-64) for Canada (N=10,050) and Sweden (N=4,680), as well as a small sub-sample of true couples in Sweden (N=835). Results show that night sleep disruptions followed by childcare and non-childcare activities are more prevalent for women than men in both Sweden and Canada, but find gender differences of such disruptions to be more salient in Canada concerning childcare disruptions, and Sweden concerning non-childcare disruptions. Some evidence is uncovered to suggest that couples in Sweden who divide household labor more equally during the day, extend this egalitarianism into the night. Results also show that those who experience night disruptions compensate for the loss in sleep efficiency in other activities. The results illustrate that night sleep disruptions for childcare and non-childcare related factors manifest themselves differently according to gender across countries, and that such disruptions are more costly to women than men.     

Social Time Structures and Politics of Time

Author: Björn Gernig

 

Within politics, results from time use research do not have the significance they could have, even within ‘politics of time’. This might not so much be because of how these results are communicated, but because of what is communicated. Time use is constrained (and is enabled) by social time structures, but in much research, time use is treated as a money-like resource, i.e. analyses of time use data focus on the decontextualized aggregated duration of activities. But people are not free to allocate their time use over the day just as they wish. Individual time use is grounded a collective temporal framework, a social time structure, which lends weight to timing, sequence, frequency and synchronization demands next to duration of activities.  In my dissertation, I tackle this problem using the latest German time use data and the example of “time scarcity”. The conference presentation will cover my results: Supported by slides, I will briefly introduce implicit and explicit politics of time (the latter addressing time structural changes) and also briefly outline my theoretical conception of a social time structure manifested in everyday-life routines (based on Giddens 1984; Gershuny 2000 and the time geography approach) and the methodological consequences for empirical analyses. Exemplary, time scarcity will be scrutinized. While there are different terms and operationalizations of this concept (see eg. Kalenkoski, et al. 2011; Williams et al. 2016), they mostly use duration of activities as indicator. In the German time use study, subjective time scarcity was surveyed with a 5-point scale, which is my depended variable in the following analyses. I use ordinal regression to show that except for media use, sports/hobbies and adult care within the household, no activities’ duration has a significant effect on subjective time scarcity. With reference to van Tienoven, et al. (2017) and Vagni & Cornwell (2018), I employ social sequence and cluster analysis to visualize the German social time structure including all persons, not only employed people, differentiated by day of the week. I identify 12 clusters, which have a highly significant effect on subjective time scarcity in an ordinal regression. I show how the collective time structure frames individual time use. Subjective time scarcity is better explained by the control of time-use a person has within the time structure (measured by a proxy variable “I must plan my days ahead very well”).

My approach includes the whole population, and connects individual time use with structural constraints and enablings. This can inform politics better than just results from analyses of durations.

 

Keywords: communicating time-use research findings to the public,  empirical analyses of time-use data, using time-use data to inform and evaluate social policy, time-use research methodology (quantitative methods, modeling, analytical approaches)

 

Gershuny, Jonathan (2000): Changing Times : Work and Leisure in Postindustrial Society. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

Giddens, Anthony (1984): The Constitution of Society : Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Kalenkoski, Charlene M.; Hamrick, Karen S. & Andrews, Margaret (2011): Time Poverty Thresholds and Rates for the US Population. In: Social Indicators Research, 104 (1): 129-155.

Vagni, Giacomo & Cornwell, Benjamin (2018): Patterns of everyday activities across social contexts. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (24): 6183-6188.

van Tienoven, Theun P.; Glorieux, Ignace & Minnen, Joeri (2017): Exploring the stable practices of everyday life: A multi-day time-diary approach. In: The Sociological Review, 65 (4): 745-762.

Williams, Jason R.; Masuda, Yuta J. & Tallis, Heather (2016): A Measure Whose Time has Come: Formalizing Time Poverty. In: Social Indicators Research, 128 (1): 265-283.

Will a use of new information technology such as AI improve worker’s well-being by decreasing work hours and increasing work efficiency? : Evidence from panel data analysis

Author: Sachiko Kuroda
Contributing author(s): Isamu Yamamoto

This paper examines how workers well-being such as health and job engagement changes is affected, and what kind of workers and workplaces are more influenced, by introducing and utilizing new information technology such as AI, IoT, and big data, based on workers panel data. First, we found that workers with relatively more routine tasks, with higher wages, with longer working hours, and in the workplace improving operational efficiency tend to introduce and utilize new information technology. Second, panel data estimation shows that well-being indices such as mental health index and work engagement index tend to increase after the introduction and utilization of new information technology. Thus, the introduction and utilization of new technologies such as AI can be interpreted as improving well-being such as mental health and work engagement, as a result that the effect of supporting workers is greater than the effect of increasing the workload. In addition, we found that the impact of such new information technology on well-being is more evident for the workers with clear job description, with high job discretion, with frequent unexpected jobs, and in the workplace conducting work-style reform such as improving operation efficiency, reducing overtime work, promoting morning and evening non-work activities, and promoting paid holidays.

BOOSTING NEW TIME USE IN COMPANIES IN BARCELONA

Author: Sara Berbel
Contributing author(s): --

BOOSTING NEW TIME USE IN COMPANIES IN BARCELONA

Sara Berbel Sánchez, Managing Director of Barcelona Activa. Barcelona City Council

 

According to a study carried out by the IESE -a Business School from Barcelona, rated amongst the best business schools in the world by The Financial Times in 2018- 73% of the employees in Spain believe that their company makes the balance of personal and work life difficult.  Furthermore, in Spain the 64% of the people work in their free time and the 68% receive work emails or calls outside their work schedule. On the other hand, the data available show that companies which adopt flexible working hours and compressed working weeks are more competitive, reaching an increase of 19% in their productivity and reducing absenteeism by up to 30% due to the improvement of the work environment.   

The City Council of Barcelona launched The Barcelona Time Agreement, a set of municipal public policies aimed at improving population’s welfare through a more efficient time use patterns. In this framework, the City Council encourages different kind of projects to raise awareness amongst the business sector to promote a healthier, more egalitarian and efficient time organisation. A cornerstone of this set of public policies is the Business Network for a New Social Time Use, which gathers more than 100 companies and organisation.

Barcelona Activa, as the public local development agency with the mission to promote socioeconomic policies in Barcelona, implements the following strategic actions which would be presented in the 41st IATUR upcoming congress:

  • The elaboration of a Guide on new time uses for the business trainers and advisers of Barcelona Activa whose job is aimed at supporting business development in Barcelona.
  • A Training program to raise awareness amongst the entrepreneurs of the city on the positive outcomes of the change of the time uses.
  • The Mentoring Programme in Time Organization, based on the Barcelona Mentoring Programme and inspired by the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, encourages companies with expertise, and a recognized trajectory in the field of time organization to coach companies that want to improve their time use patterns.

2017-18 American Time Use Survey Leave and Job Flexibilities Module

Author: Stephanie Denton

 

The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) is a rich source of public use microdata for researchers. With data collected from more than 200,000 interviews starting in 2003, the ATUS provides a wealth of detail for numerous research projects.  ATUS data from the core time diary allow for nationally representative estimates of how people spend their time.  Occasionally, organizations sponsor a module, or series of questions on a special topic usually related to time use.  An ATUS module is designed to supplement data from the core ATUS.

 

Recognizing the need for more information on workers’ access to and use of leave, as well as data on flexible work schedules, the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau sponsored a Leave and Job Flexibilities module in the ATUS from January 2017 through December 2018.  The module included questions about workers’ access to paid and unpaid leave, their use of leave, and their unmet need to take leave.  In addition, the module included questions about the types of shifts people work, how much flexibility and control workers have in determining their schedules, and whether they can or do work from home. 

 

The data from the 2017-18 ATUS Leave and Job Flexibilities Module will provide a richer description of work, specifically workers’ access to paid and unpaid leave, the reasons for which workers are able to take leave, leave activity, and information about job flexibilities and work schedules.  Coupled with time use data, this information will allow for a more extensive understanding of the constraints that people face in their daily lives, and how access to and use of leave, and the flexibility in one’s job can affect not only workers, but also their families and society in general.  By combining two years of data, researchers will have a larger sample size for improved estimate quality, as well as increased analytical capacity for studying subgroups and smaller subpopulations compared to using a single year of data. 

 

The poster will include information about the data that will be available from the 2017-18 Leave and Job Flexibilities Module, which is scheduled for release in the fall of 2019.  

Leisure time patterns of time poor and time rich women

Author:
Contributing author(s): Ignace Glorieux

Higher educated people tend to have less leisure time and experience more time pressure than lower educated people (e.g. Glorieux et al., 2006). Nevertheless, it is these higher educated people who have quite a large repertoire of leisure activities. Being time poor (having insufficient time for rest and leisure) does not always seem a constraint to participate in certain leisure activities. Many studies have also shown women, and particularly mothers, to experience time shortages more than men. However, big disparities also exist within the group of women. Focusing on women only and using both objective and subjective (experienced time pressure) time poverty, we will distinguish between time rich and time poor women and analyse the quality of their leisure and the leisure activities these time poor and time rich engage in. Next, we carry out a sequence analysis on the Flemish Time Use Survey data of 2013 (TOR 13 – women: N=1638) for both groups to relate leisure time consumption to patterns of paid and unpaid work. How do leisure time patterns differ between time poor and time rich women? And which patterns cause more or less subjective time pressure? 

Time poverty in Chile: how to measure it?

Author: Jorge Rosales-Salas

Theme 1: time-use research methodology (quantitative methods, modeling, analytical approaches) Theme 2:  using time-use data to inform and evaluate social policy

Abstract: It has been long argued that standard poverty measures - framed within the neoclassical approach which assumes that people can obtain a higher level of well-being if they have higher incomes- are far from adequate. The traditional income-based poverty methods have been widely criticized because they are a simplistic view of a complex phenomenon. Since the 1960s some economists have incorporated time use in the analysis of poverty, such as Becker, Vickery, Burchardt, and Kalenkoski.

In this paper, I will analyze the concept of time poverty and the different methodologies by which it is calculated. Using the 2015 Chilean Time Use Survey (ENUT) - first national TUS in Chile -  I will use known two-dimensional time poverty approaches and the consideration of absolute and relative limits in the measurement of time poverty. I will also propose my own methodology of calculating time poverty and compare all measurement. I believe that by doing this, I can find an improved way of thinking about its policy implications.

 Keywords: time poverty; Chile

Eating Patterns, Time Use, and Obesity: A Comparison of SNAP and Non-SNAP Participants Using the ATUS-EHM Data

Author: Ji Yong Lee
Contributing author(s): Rodolfo M. Nayga, Jr., Brandon Restrepo, Young Jo

 

One of the issues about The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation is whether this program contributes to high rates of overweight and obesity among low-income populations. A well-documented finding about SNAP is that benefit expenditure tends to be highest within the first or second week of issuance and benefits typically do not last until the next issuance date, indicating that food may be abundant for a household in the days after benefit issuance, and much less near the end of the benefit cycle. This irregular food consumption pattern among SNAP participants, with binge eating immediately after benefit issuance and reduced consumption at the end of benefit cycle, can be linked to weight gain. Even though eating patterns can differ significantly between SNAP recipients and eligible non-recipients, and eating pattern is an important determinant of obesity, no research has compared the eating patterns of these two groups. Understanding SNAP recipients’ eating patterns is important for policy makers who are concerned about periodic food intake of low-income populations and its potentially negative effect on weight status. This is also important for providing insights into why nutrition and health outcomes vary across different segments of the population.

This study will investigate the effect of how SNAP recipients’ usage of time for eating (i.e., time of the day of meals, time spent on eating, and frequency of eating) influence their risk of obesity compared to eligible non-participants. Specifically, we are interested in answering the following questions: (1) Are SNAP recipients’ time use patterns of eating different from those of non-participants? (2) Are certain patterns of eating and time use associated with the risk of obesity and are these different between SNAP recipients and non-participants? To address the questions, we will use the data from both 2006-2008 and 2014-2016 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and Eating and Health Module (EHM). We will use matching methods to mitigate the selection bias problem. We will correct for potential measurement errors in the self-reported BMI measure using validation data. Our results generally show that SNAP recipients significantly reduce their eating time at the end of benefit month.

Time poverty of single mothers in Japan

Author: Takeshi Mizunoya

 

The purpose of this study is to examine the situation of time poverty of single mothers with a little child, by using official time use statistics in Japan. The study tries to identify time and income poverty for such mothers and compare with working couples with a little child. It regards parents as time poverty when total time of paid and unpaid work for single mothers in weekdays exceeds 12 hours, where they are simply overworked and face with poor life-work balance. It also regards them as income poverty when their income is below minimum living costs. The study uses microdata of Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities by Statistics Japan, and tries to quantify time and income poverty among single mothers with a little child.

How to modernise TUS? The Belgian Case – A modular production process

Author: Kelly Sabbe
Contributing author(s): Joeri Minnen (VUB-TOR), Hubertus Cloodt (Eurostat), Elke Nagel (Destatis)

Abstract for Belgian presentation for proposal 2 from Hubertus Cloodt (EU/Eurostat).

Both posters and the leaflet are a collaboration between Statbel, the Belgian statistical office; Destatis, the German statistical office; VUB-TOR, the department of the Free University of Brussels and Eurostat.

Poster 1

Time Use Data - Go Smart

This poster announces the modernisation of time use data collection in EU member states to share common data collection tools for harmonized and comparable results.

Poster 2

How to modernise TUS? The Belgian Case – A modular production process

Tis poster visualizes the modular production process for the next Time Use Survey in Belgium:

  1. STATBEL specifies needs

  2. MOTUS modules are the building blocks to design the survey and to process the data collection

  3. Further analysis of the collected data by VUB-TOR

  4. STATBEL data dissemination (e.g. to other organisations, Eurostat)

Leaflet

Modernisation of Time Use Data Collection in EU member states – The Belgian Case

This leaflet gives an answer to “Why modernise the data collection for Harmonised European Time Use Surveys (HETUS)?” by explaining the history of the Wiesbaden Memorandum (DGINS 2011) and the reaction of Eurostat to this with the launch of projects enabling member states to develop “Innovative Tools and sources for diary-based surveys”  which can be shared with other countries within the scope of ESS.

The leaflet explains shorty how Time Use Surveys should be conducted according to HETUS-guidelines. These guidelines are written in a way that modernisation of the data collection is not only possible, but advised.

In Belgium (Statbel) and Germany (Destatis), the SOURCETM project started in the spring of 2019 for the duration of 14 months, with the following objectives:

  1. Software OUtreach: sharing knowledge about MOTUS via CSPA compliant documentation

  2. Redefinition: mapping the content and technical requirements

  3. Collect: setting up a modular collection strategy with MOTUS (with a focus on governmental practices)

  4. E-data: a pilot test and the dissemination of data with MOTUS

Furthermore, MOTUS (Modular Online Time Use Survey) as software platform  and the app as front-office are explained.

A concrete example of ongoing work in Belgium and Germany on modernisation - the SOURCETM project

Author: Kelly Sabbe
Contributing author(s): Joeri Minnen (TOR-VUB/hbits), Elke Nagel (Destatis), Hubertus Cloodt (Eurostat)

 

Abstract for Belgian presentation for proposal 1 from Hubertus Cloodt (EU/Eurostat).

 

Eurostat started in 2017 a project to modernise the data collection in EU/EFTA Member States for completing the Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS) and the Household Budget Survey (HBS).

 

This project builds on the 2011 DGINS Wiesbaden Memorandum which stressed « the need for better information from time use and household budgets in terms of coverage and comparability »

 

  • by means of modernisation;

  • to explore and implement new possibilities for improved responsiveness to user needs;

  • better integration between the collection of data and the use of other data sources;

  • and more efficient data collection for EU/EFTA Member States, taking into account technological developments.

 

After three rounds of paper-based Time Use data collection in Belgium and Germany, Eurostat is an accelerator in the needed modernisation/digitalisation of data collection and dissemination by financing projects that use innovative tools and sources for these surveys.

 

In Belgium and Germany, the SOURCETM project is a collaboration between Statbel, the Belgian statistical office; Destatis, the German statistical office and TOR/hbits, the time use research department of the VUB. Statbel is responsible for the coordination, Destatis the beneficiary and TOR-VUB/hbits the subcontractor.

 

The SOURCETM projects includes Software OUtreach and Redefinition to Collect E-data Through MOTUS. MOTUS, which stands for Modular Online Time Use Survey, is software platform with a user-friendly mobile and app interface that uses building blocks in the back office to meet the needs of organisations regarding their diary based data collections.

 

This presentation will give an overview of the progress made on the deliverables within the four work packages:

 

  1. Software OUtreach: sharing the knowledge about MOTUS via CSPA compliant documentation

  2. Redefinition: mapping of the content and technical requirements for TUS&HBS

  3. Collect: setting up a data collection strategy: governmental, panel, household level

  4. E-data: towards a harmonised approach to support ESS shareability

Furthermore, the progress of MOTUS as an innovative solution within the ESS framework, as a part of the  << Innovative Tools Inventory >> and documented through the UNECE CSPA catalogue will be given.

Modernization efforts in Europe and beyond: an inventory of Innovative Tools and Sources for Time Use data collection

Author: Eniel Ninka
Contributing author(s): Hubertus Cloodt

Introduction and background

In 2017 Eurostat started a project on modernization of data collection for two diary-based social statistics domains: Household Budget Survey (HBS) and Time Use Survey (TUS). Two Task Forces (TF), which consist of experts from National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and university research centers, are part of this project. TF members expressed the need to set up an Inventory of innovative tools and sources that exist, or are planned to be developed, in the European Statistical System (ESS), supporting the data collection for both the HBS and TUS.

The aim of the presentation is to inform the participants about the purpose of this Inventory, its content, plans on its future maintenance, and practical information on how to access it.

The purpose of the Inventory

The purpose of the Inventory is to catalogue tools, sources and information on projects which can lead to new or updated tools. It supports tools assessment and comparison, as well as the management of information about them. The Inventory allows obtaining a better insight on the covered functions, the interoperability and shareability level of different solutions for data collection within the ESS statistical production process. Furthermore, it contributes to the continuous and further harmonisation of tools among different countries.

Information therein contained was collected through an online questionnaire which was distributed to European NSOs and to other interested parties, such as universities, public institutions, and private organisations. Though the bulk of information was collected during the first half of 2018, the process is ongoing and information about new tools has been recently added.

Structure and content of the Inventory

The Inventory is structured into two main blocs: one for the tools and one for the sources. Tools are divided according to the survey they are used for, i.e. TUS or HBS. The information on tools is the same for both surveys. It has been grouped into 8 main categories following a logical order from non-technical to technical description (Figure 1).

Currently the Inventory contains information on 15 tools for Time Use data collection (Table 1). About half are being developed by NSOs, the rest by universities, research centres, and private companies. Nine tools are already being used for collecting data. In addition, the Inventory contains information on sources of data being investigated or planned for adoption in a number of European countries by NSOs, research centres, universities and private companies that have an interest on this kind of data.

Standardization efforts

In order to achieve a minimum of standardization, Eurostat and the Task Forces have agreed to adopt the recommendations of the Common Statistical Production Architecture (CSPA) in the descriptions of the tools. CSPA compliant descriptions are already available at the definition level. Whereas, tools that are being used in production will be described at the specification level.

Criteria for assessment of tools

Eurostat and the TFs have defined a list of criteria to be used for assessing tools that would, in the future, be candidate to become shareable at ESS level. A working document that contains the list criteria has been written, while the criteria have been integrated in the Inventory.

Plans for maintaining and updating the information

Currently the Inventory exists as an MS EXCEL workbook with more than 30 tabs. Eurostat is considering the setting up of a web based application with a number of functionalities, such as User Management, etc.

The Inventory is unique in that it provides information on tools and sources being planned, developed or already used in data collection within the ESS space and beyond. It needs to be maintained in order to offer an up-to-date view on the progress made in the ESS in modernisation TUS data collection at any time. To this aim, three new questionnaires will be used in the process of updating the Inventory: a first, standard questionnaire, to collect information on tools deployed in production, or tools that are in the pilot phase, or in a very advanced phase of development; a second questionnaire will focus on sources; while a third questionnaire will focus on new ideas and projects in the early phases of development.

Moreover, a strategy that aims at updating the Inventory's information regularly has been put in place.

 

 

Table 1. Information on tools included in the Inventory

COUNTRY (ORGANISATION)

Development phase

NAME OF THE TOOL

BELGIUM (Free Univ. Brussel)

Production

MOTUS

GERMANY (NSO)

Conceptual

No name

GERMANY (Univ. Hohenheim)

Production

TIMETRACKER

ESTONIA (NSO)

Conceptual

ONLINE DIARY

ITALY (Univ. Trento)

Production

iLOG

ITALY (Univ. Torino)

Test

SMARTIME

HUNGARY (NSO)

Production

IDŐMÉRLEG

NETHERLANDS ()

No info

TBO LISS

AUSTRIA (NSO)

Pilot

ZEITVERWENDUNGSERHEBUNG

AUSTRIA (XIMES)

Production

SMART ACTIVITY ANALYSIS

FINLAND (NSO)

Production

XCOLA

FINLAND (FIOH)

Production

AIKANI

SLOVENIA (NSO)

Production

TIME USE BLOG

UK (NSO)

Conceptual

ONLINE TUS

UK (CTUR)

Production

INSTRUMENT FOR 9 COUNTRY SURVEY

 

Figure 1: Structure of the Inventory of Tools and Sources.

 

Practical information

The scope of the inventory, and its use as a tool, will not be limited to the members of the two Task Forces. In fact, the Inventory, as a unique collection of information on tools and sources being used within ESS, has generated an interest that goes beyond the ESS borders. Since a growing number of users are interested on the inventory, an “Inventory User Guide” is being prepared to facilitate the use of the information in the Inventory.

How to access the inventory?

Currently the Inventory is hosted in the projects' wiki page within European Commission's external wiki platform. Hence, those interested on the Inventory should first gain access to the wiki.

The steps to follow are three:

1. Obtain your EU Login (if you do not have one): https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/cas

2. Login in a first time to the wiki in Confluence (if you have never done it before):

https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis

3. Contact Eurostat by e-mail and tell you went through the first two steps:

Hubertus.Cloodt@ec.europa.eu

Eniel.NINKA@ext.ec.europa.eu

Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS): Concept and methodological guidelines for HETUS wave 2020

Author: Paul Camenzind

For 20 years now, several European countries have conducted Time Use Surveys (TUS) based on comparable survey designs. Eurostat issued in 2000, for the first time, methodological guidelines for "Harmonised European Time Use Surveys" (HETUS) used by 15 European countries in HETUS wave 2000. Based on these experiences, European countries asked Eurostat in 2006 to update the guidelines. The main goal of the update was again to achieve higher compatibility of concepts, but also a general simplification of the survey. The work resulted in the publication of HETUS 2008 guidelines and 18 European countries participated on this methodological basis in HETUS wave 2010.

In 2016, Eurostat and its dedicated Working Group on Time Use Surveys (WG TUS) started the work on updating the 2008 methodological guidelines with a view to the upcoming HETUS wave 2020. Sub-groups of the WG TUS worked out general recommendations for the 2020 data collection, and in addition, Eurostat launched two grants actions to support the preparation and modernisation. On the basis of these recommendations and grant action results Eurostat prepared during 2018 – in close cooperation with the WG TUS – the final draft of the HETUS 2018 guidelines und published them in February 2019.

The major changes in HETUS 2018 guidelines, compared to the 2008 guidelines, were

 •          Introduction of a new diary column on Information and Communication Technology (ICT);

 •          Preservation of a very similar Activity Coding List (ACL 2018) compared to the ACL 2008;

 •          Recording of satisfaction of people by four questions at the end of the diary (but no column);

 •          Reduction of the number of questions in the household and individual model questionnaire;

 •          Removal (at least temporary) of the form "Weekly Schedule of Working Time";

 •          Assurance of compliance of the HETUS guidelines with the European Framework regulation for the production of European statistics on persons and households (Integrated European Social Statistics – IESS; standardised social variables and household/ usual residence concepts);

 •          Provision of an explicit list of microdata variables to be collected for HETUS wave 2020.

Simultaneously with the work on the update of the HETUS guidelines, Eurostat – in collaboration with a dedicated Task Force (TF) on Innovative Tools for TUS and the Household Budget Survey (HBS) – has been running a project on modernising HBS and TUS focusing on new tools and sources of data collection to decrease the burden on respondents and National Statistical Institutes. These new ways of data collection should complement the traditional ones in the near future, e.g. using web diaries, mobile apps, geo-location or other ways of passive data collection.

Nevertheless, the timeline of this innovation project was longer than for the HETUS 2018 guidelines and its outputs could not be integrated (yet) into the guidelines at this stage. However, there is a need to provide additional guidelines with a view to the data collection via new tools and sources. In consequence, Eurostat plans to produce documents with additional guidance relating to the new ways of data collection when the output of the work of the above-mentioned TF is available. This might be also the opportunity to reintroduce in the guidelines some elements considered too cumbersome with traditional data collection methods. As an example, the form "weekly schedule of working time" could be reconsidered.

An Examination of High School Students’ Time Use in the U.S.

Author: Rose Woods

The time high school students spend attending class, studying, working, and engaging in leisure activities helps us understand the daily constraints they face and the choices they make. The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) produces time-use estimates annually for selected age groups, including 15- to 19-year-olds. However, estimates for high school students have been examined less frequently.

Using data from the 2003-2017 ATUS, I examine how teenage high school students spend their time and how their time use changed over this period. In this research, I restrict the data to the months when high school students attend school (September through May). I examine a number of factors that may affect their time use, including age, gender, race, ethnicity, household composition, parents’ educational attainment, employment status, and whether the respondent or his parents are foreign-born.

Diary questions about where the respondent was and who was in the room during the activity provide additional information about their time use. I examine time spent alone, with family members, and with others in three periods, 2003-2007, 2008-2012, and 2013-2017. I evaluate the overall changes in time spent alone, with family, and with others. I also examine these measures for selected activities. 

While there were some differences across the three periods, differences across demographic characteristics were more pronounced.  Female students were more likely to engage in household activities, shopping, and socializing.  Male students were more likely to participate in sports and exercise activities, to spend time playing games, and to use the computer as a leisure activity. In addition to the differences across gender, I will present the results for the demographic factors described above and discuss the changes across the 2003-2017 period.

Questionnaire Improvements to the 2017-2018 American Time Use Survey Leave and Job Flexibilities Module

Author: Rose Woods
Contributing author(s): Liana Christin Landivar, Mark deWolf

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release data and results from an updated American Time Use Survey (ATUS) Leave and Job Flexibilities Module in 2019. The module is a 5-minute survey of employed wage and salary workers that provides data in five key areas: access to paid leave, access to unpaid leave, use of leave, schedules and job flexibility, and unmet need for leave. The module was jointly developed by the Women’s Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the U.S. Department of Labor, sponsored by the Women’s Bureau, processed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2011, ATUS conducted its first Leave Module.

 

While many questions remain the same as those used in the 2011 Leave Module, some have been dropped, and some have been added to obtain better information about the availability and use of flexible work hours, usual work schedules, and the ability to work from home. Compared with the 2011 module, the 2017-2018 module includes new questions on workplace flexibility and location, along with refinements to questions on access and use of leave. An additional year of data allows for improved estimate quality, as well as increased analytical capacity for subgroups and smaller populations.

 

This poster will focus on the questionnaire improvements introduced as a result of cognitive interviewing testing, follow-up online testing, expert evaluation, and experience from the 2011 Leave Module. We will display selected results from the 2011 module, highlighting some of the issues we faced and sought to address in the 2017-2018 module.  In addition, we will present findings from the cognitive testing showing which questions were misunderstood or were difficult for respondents to answer, and how these questions were redesigned to yield improved data. The poster will show which questions were eliminated because of time constraints or data quality concerns, as well as questions that were newly introduced to the 2017-2018 module. The poster will be of interest to users of the ATUS, as well as researchers who are developing their own time use questions.

 

Project: innovative tools and sources for data collection - Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS)

Author: Hubertus Cloodt

 

Please consider this to be  a "speical" abstract.

Eurostat is willing to organise a parallel session as explained in the following email exchange.For the listed proposals and items separate abstracts will be sent or have already been send by other Eurostat and EU Member States participants.

In the introduction of the session, a general overview of the mentioned project and involvement of Member States is foreseen. In case a separate abstract is needed for this then that can be provided.

 

See attached document for more details.

The Relative Influences of Sexuality and Gender on Partnered Americans’ Leisure Time

Author: Eric Stone
Contributing author(s): Liana C. Sayer

Amounts and types of leisure are behavioral indicators of health and social integration that are linked with gender and social class disparities in health. Intersecting influences of sexuality and gender have been overlooked, despite evidence that sexuality affects leisure preferences and constraints, and health outcomes. We use 2003-2017 American Time Use Survey data to examine leisure activity differences between cohabiting or married gay men, lesbian women, and heterosexual women and men. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, we model differences by gender and sexuality in active, social, sedentary, and socially isolated leisure time. We find gay men report less sedentary and socially isolated leisure than heterosexual men, but more than lesbian women. Lesbian women also report more sedentary and socially isolated leisure compared with heterosexual women. However, sociodemographic differences account for associations of sexuality with leisure within gender, but do not explain leisure disparities comparing gay men and lesbian women. These findings suggest a difference in the experience and place of intersections of gender and sexuality in the United States, emphasize the influence of social disadvantage on leisure time quality, and provide the opportunity to reconsider early arguments about the influences and relative importance of sexuality and gender. Additional analyses reveal that the association of “middle-income” status and interactions with sexuality are statistically significantly associated with the amount of time spent in active leisure (across relationship types). Our work contributes by using an intersectional lens to advance the evidence base about the complex connections between social disadvantage and leisure disparities.

How Are Mom and Dad?: Associations of Marital Status and Gender with Parents’ Self-Care Time

Author: Eric Stone

There is a well-established link between self-care activities and physical and mental health outcomes. And the extent to which adults engage in self-care activities is linked with social class and gender disparities in health. Intersecting influences of marital status, parental status, and gender on self-care time use patterns have largely been overlooked, despite evidence that mothers’ marital status affects housework, childcare, sleep, and leisure preferences. Additionally, while variation in mothers’ time use is less studied than differences between mothers and fathers, variations in fathers’ time use are largely unexplored. I use 2003-2017 American Time Use Survey data to examine self-care activity differences among mothers and among fathers by marital status. I find few differences among fathers on the basis of marital status. Compared to married fathers, never married fathers spend more time in grooming, cohabiting fathers spend more time in sleep, and never married fathers spend less time in health-care. However, compared to married mothers, separated/divorced and never married mothers both spend more time in grooming, sleep, health-care, and total self-care – providing further support for the “doing gender” perspective. Additionally, never married mothers spend less time in physical exercise and separated/divorced mothers spend less time in cognitive activities. Associations between mothers’ marital status and self-care largely remain after accounting for family composition and sociodemographic characteristics, but associations between fathers’ marital status and self-care are largely accounted for by differences in sociodemographic characteristics. This work contributes to the evidence base about the complex connections between marital status, social disadvantage, and time use deficits.

The Portability of Work Among Executive Women

Author: Mark Mark Ellwood

This innovative work-life balance time study of executive woman aims to understand how the portability of work affects balance. When work is expected to be done at any hour of the day, what kinds of activities require urgent attention? What work activities impinge on personal time during the evenings and on weekends? Requests from bosses, urgent issues, or just a glut of unnecessary emails? How do successful women create greater control to minimize the portability of work?

 

To find out, executive women managing employees in large corporations tracked their own time on 20 activities for two weeks using the easy-to-use TimeCorder device. They gathered time-use data whenever work happens – at work in the office and at home. They tracked a series of activities within their control and those that they have to react to.

 

The TimeCorder is a stand-alone is electronic device that allows users to easily track their time by pushing buttons associated with pre-coded activities. The TimeCorder has a series of buttons labelled A to Z. Each time a participant presses a pre-coded letter, time stops recording on the previous activity and begins recording on a new one, like a chess clock in reverse.

 

The TimeCorder also tracks timestamps. This shows which activities are during regular work hours, and which are done after hours and on weekends. This is critical to understand the kinds of activities that leak into off hours.

 

This study uniquely measures differences versus ideal expectations established by participants themselves.

 

This time-use study offers important insights for senior executives on the causes of work overload.

 

Relevance to Theme:

The presentation will also include a section that pertains to the conference theme, "Communicating Time Use Research To The Public." It will discuss the use of social media, presentations, articles, and the participants themselves as means to communicate the relevant findings.

 

VETUS – Visual Exploration of Time Use Data to Support Environmental Assessment of Lifestyles

Author: Jan Bieser
Contributing author(s): David Haas, Lorenz M. Hilty

 

The time-use (or activity) patterns individuals perform on a typical day – their individual lifestyles – fundamentally shape our society and the environment we live in. Not only are lifestyles evolving over time, driven by societal and technological change, they also significantly contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 12 “responsible consumption and production”, namely through the resource use and emissions associated with goods and services consumed to perform activities.

 

We created an interactive, browser-based tool to visualize and intuitively explore statistical time-use data. The visualization helps to gain an overview about the available data, identify and compare common time-use patterns and draw up hypotheses about the relationship between changes in lifestyles and their social and environmental consequences. As humans are good at visual perception, visualization of time-use data can help researchers to explore time-use data, attract a wider audience to time-use data and communicate time-use research to policy makers and the public.

 

We use the tool in a pilot application to compare time-use data from different regions, time periods as well as socio-economic and demographic backgrounds. For each time-use pattern we also estimated the total energy consumption associated with the activities performed on the day using average energy intensities of activity categories. We found initial evidence that increased use of information and communication technology does not necessarily reduce energy consumption of individual lifestyles. From a time-use perspective, any technological change which triggers changes in time allocation can only be environmentally sustainable if the environmental impact of the total of the activities performed after the change is lower than before.

 

There is much potential to further improve the tool, i.e. directly including environmental data in the tool or improving the performance. We encourage researchers interested in time-use data to use this visualization and even add further functionality. The visualization tool with a reduced data set can be accessed at: https://datavis.lanaya.io. The documentation is available at: https://github.com/Sonnenstrahl/datavis

 

 

Country & Type of Day Variation in Associations of Employment with Mother’s Unpaid Work

Author: Liana Sayer
Contributing author(s): Sanjiv Gupta, UMass-Amherst, & Jessica Pearlman, UMass-Amherst

The constraints imposed by the 24 hour day on time allocation decisions have been studied since the 1960s (Szalai 1972). Sociological and economic models of time use emphasize trade-offs between paid work and unpaid work, theorizing that individuals with higher returns to paid work will allocate more time to employment whereas those with greater household demands will devote more time to unpaid work (Blood and Wolfe 1960, Lundberg and Pollak 1996). Coverman developed this into the time availability perspective, which holds that the more time in employment, the less time is available for housework and child care (Coverman 1983, Coverman 1985). The time availability hypothesis has been extensively tested, with studies from multiple countries and time periods documenting the negative association between women’s employment hours and housework and child care time. Investigation of how associations of employment hours with housework and child care vary between weekdays and weekends is needed to gain better understanding of how institutional temporal rhythms (e.g. employment, schools) produce systematic variation by employment in housework and child care (Manke et al 1994). To our knowledge, only four studies have examined weekday and weekend differences with findings indicating employed women do more housework on weekends compared to weekdays (Clarke, Allen and Salinas 1986, Hook 2017, Manke et al. 1994, Robinson, Converse and Szalai 1972). These studies are limited to the U.S., consider only total time in routine housework, and do not analyze child care.  They are thus not able to determine if employment hours constraint time available for all types of housework and for all types of child care in equivalent ways across countries with distinct gender logics, employment systems, and work/family policies.  Further, they do not examine if any shifts of housework and perhaps child care from weekdays with stronger time constraints to weekends with weaker time constraints operates in similar fashion for types of housework and child care. We address these limitations using weekday and weekend 24h time diaries from Finland 2009, the Netherlands 2004, and the UK 2014, downloaded from the Multinational Time Diary Study IPUMS Time Use archive https://www.mtusdata.org/mtus/. We compare variation in associations of employment time with cooking, cleaning, physical and developmental child care in similar ways on weekdays and weekends and in similar ways in Finland, the Netherlands, and the UK.

 

Intersecting Time Inequalities in the Contemporary United States

Author: Liana Sayer

Women’s and men’s time use remains stubbornly gendered: despite women’s movement into paid work, they continue to do more housework and child care and less market work than men. The consequences of gendered divisions of labor are well-documented, depressing women’s labor force participation, wages, and promotions. However, the broad story of gender inequality in time use is limited in that it does not consider how gendered time allocations may vary by race-ethnicity, by education, and across life stage.  Racial-ethnic an deducation-differentiated pathways into parenthood and marriage and increased increased likelihood of living alone in young and older adulthood may alter the activities in which individuals engage and the amount of time spent on various activities. Objective and subjective aspects of time may be redefined across the life stage. Gender gaps in time use may be conditioned by education, life stage, and historical time.  Using ATUS 2003-2017 data, this analysis addresses these open questions. I examine gender gaps and conditioning effects of life stage and education using a reconceptualized activity typology that classifies household work and leisure activities into five distinct categories:

 

·         family caregiving (shopping for food, cooking, eating meals with family members, child care, elder care, and talking with family members); 

·         caring civic leisure (volunteering, political, religious, and civic activities);

·         social leisure (visiting and eating meals with friends, entertainment and recreation activities with another individual);  

·         self-oriented leisure (activities that are thought to develop mental, emotional, or physical capabilities, including active sports, exercise, outdoor recreation, hobbies, domestic crafts, art, music, drama, dance, and education); and

·         home-bound leisure (reading, watching television, listening to music, relaxing). 

 

Commuting time and Well-being of Workers in Mexico City

Author: Gabriel Gerardo Ramirez Atisha

 

Workers in Mexico City have to spend a lot of time commuting every day, using, in many cases, more than three hours for their journeys to and from work.  However, differences in commuting time exist between genders and socioeconomic levels. Moreover, different kinds of members of the families have unequal commuting patterns. Besides, regardless of the economic level of the workers, working time seems to be affecting commuting time as well. Longer journeys are associated with men, the poor, workers with excessive working time and sons and daughters.

 

In Mexico City, mobility has changed over the past years in terms of the origins of the journeys (living places) and the destinations (working places). Apparently this responds to a strategy of the workers to reduce the distances between these places. Besides, important measures have been carried out to improve public transportation. However, commuting time has increased considerably over the past decades. One reason for this, but not the only one, is the accelerated increase in the number of vehicles in the city.

 

In this paper I show what the reasons for the increasing commuting time observed in Mexico City could be; which sociodemographic groups are most affected and how this is related to non-paid work; what kinds of works are associated with longer journeys; and, finally, which activities, necessary for an adequate quality of life, including those related to leisure, are underperformed.

 

Tell me who's your neighbor and I will tell you how much time you've got

Author: Denys Dukhovnov
Contributing author(s): Boróka Bó

Spatial context of socio-economic disadvantage is at heart of the study of ethno-racial residential segregation. A hitherto unexplored consequence of residential segregation is the lack of discretionary, broadly defined as ‘leisure’ time, which precipitates additional financial, social, and health-related hardship among residents of segregated neighborhoods. Therefore, we propose a mechanism to uncover the extent to which ethno-racial residential segregation, along with local economic and environmental conditions, affects the severity of discretionary time scarcity. In our analysis, we use multiple years of the American Time Use Survey data to construct the estimates of county-level availability of discretionary time by age and sex for non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics of any race, living in the vicinity of 3 major metropolitan areas, the New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles. We subsequently apply the spatial downscaling and adaptive cross-border smoothing procedures to estimate the time scarcity at the level of constructed 1-km-wide cells. To measure segregation, we use US Census demographic data to compute Theil’s Information Theory Index (H) as a measure of evenness between the residential distribution of non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics within each cell. Lastly, we adapt to our analysis a number of census tract socio-economic attributes, collected through recently launched IPUMS GeoMarker database. All of the aforementioned measures serve as inputs into the 3 pairs of spatial dependency models, spatial lag, spatial error, and spatial cross-regressive, with time scarcity as the continuous outcome variable. The first regression of each pair contains Theil’s H index as the main predictor, while the counterpart model excludes it. In such a manner, we are not only able to isolate the effects of residential segregation on time scarcity, but this setup also enables us to control for spillover and spatial contiguity/clustering effects among the observed and unobserved variables. Our preliminary results indicate that patterns of residential segregation and incidence of time scarcity in the 3 cities are quite distinct, and mechanisms that govern the effect of residential segregation on discretionary time availability are equally unique in each metropolitan region.

Beyond the Time Bind: Gender Inequality and the Tempo of Life in 87 Countries

Author: Boroka Bo

This article explores the relationship between gender inequality and the tempo of life around the world. By directly situating tempo in sociological theory, I develop a more consistent, embodied, precise and generalizable measure for the tempo of public life, with gender on the forefront. To do so, I draw on the largest dataset to-date collected on the tempo of life around the world. This allows me to isolate how macro and micro level gender inequality matters in different contexts. Contrary to existing literature from the biosciences, my ordinary least squares regression results show that in countries with high levels of gender inequality, women often walk faster than men in public places. My results illustrate that the tempo of public life cannot be solely reduced to previously-explored economic, cultural and environmental differences between the northern and the southern hemispheres. The consideration of gender is imperative for understanding between-country and within-country differences in tempo.In addition to shedding light on the tempo of public life, my work also serves as an important first step toward standardizing the tempo measure, allowing for meaningful comparisons in markedly different contexts. 

Tag Team Parenting in Korea

Author: Yun-Suk Lee
Contributing author(s): Yun-Suk Lee

Some studies observed, in spite of gradual increases in dual-earner couples, a surprising continuity or even a modest growth in childcare time over the recent several decades and suggested that one of the main reason is extensive tag team parenting in many societies. But other studies report that fathers are actively involved in childcares especially while mothers also participate in family caring activities, implying low incidences of tag team parenting. Given this conflicting expectation about tag team parenting, few studies empirically examine this issue, maybe due to absence of couple-level time diary data. The 2014 Korean Time Diary Survey asks all the household members ages 10 or older to participate at the same survey day and so the wife and the husband who are married to each other fill out the time diary on a ten-minute interval. Using the couple-level information from a sample of dual-earner marital couples with at least one preschool child, this study examines how much time the mother and the father in the sample spend on childcares. Then this study questions 1) how often the mother and the father care little children together or independently, and 2) how differ the tendency of tag team parenting by social class? In order to measure parenting, we look at 1) main activities, 2) secondary activities and 3) “with” variable. Basic results show that as expected, fathers spend much less time on childcares than mothers in Korea and the levels of sole and together parenting differ according to definitions of childcares and mothers’ as well as fathers’ social and economic features. We discuss the implications of findings in Korea to the literature on father’s childcares.

Education and Housework Participation in Taiwan, Japan and the US

Author: Kamila Kolpashnikova
Contributing author(s): Evan Koike, Man Yee Kan

We analyze cross-sectional time-use diaries from Japan, Taiwan, and the US using the 2006 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities, the 2004 Taiwan Social Development Trends Survey, and the 2004-2006 American Time Use Survey. We explore the association between educational level and housework participation in these three societies. We test whether more educated women spend less time on housework as the previous research suggests. We find that this hypothesis stands only for non-married women. On the other hand, married Japanese and Taiwanese mothers with children are unlikely to reduce the participation in housework with the increase of their educational level. Moreover, Japanese married women’s participation in housework also does not depend on their educational level. The results suggest that in Japan, the structure of the labor market as well as the institute of marriage place higher expectations on women’s housework participation. In Taiwan, motherhood is associated with expectation of performing housework, regardless of women’s educational attainment. These results for Japan and Taiwan diverge from the expectations on women with higher levels of education in the US, and broadly in the countries of the global north.

The Effects of Time Spent with Friends on the Subjective Satisfaction of Teenagers

Author: Nhoeul Kim

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of time spent with friends on the subjective satisfaction of teenagers. Previous studies on the use of time by teenagers were mainly analyzed using time amount data. In the study, I used the time slot data of the 2014 Korea Time Use Survey to analyze who teens are satisfied with they spend their time with. Teenagers in Korea spend most of their time at school preparing for college entrance exams, in particular, high school students stay at school until late at night to self-study. 3,570 respondents said they spend more than 80 percent of their week time alone(mainly, studying).

As a result of a multivariate logistic regression that separates ‘Time with parents or brothers’, ‘Time with friends’ and ‘Time alone’, teenagers are most satisfied with the time with their friends. In addition, in the case of time with parents, The satisfaction of teenagers is affected not by how much time they spent with their parents, but by the level to which their parents are satisfied with parent's lives.

An international comparison of the Child and Youth Happiness Index among 33 OECD member countries found that, unfortunately, for the current 11 years, Korea ranked 33rd, the lowest since 2008, and its suicide rate is very high. As a policy alternative to helping to spend more time with friends, I expect their lives to be happier than before.

Measuring gender equality by means of time-use data: bringing differences in the quality of daily life to the surface

Author: Ignace Glorieux

Gender inequality is often measured by means of general statistics on the participation in the central institutions of modern societies, such as political participation, participation in education, and labor market participation. General indicators, such as the Gender Development Index (GDI), even summarize different of these indicators to measure evolutions and to compare countries in terms of gender equality. Such indicators sure have their qualities and make inequalities visible and discussible. 

Time-use data, mostly collected by means of diaries and containing information of sequences of activities during a given period (day(s), week) are another source to measure inequalities of women and men. These studies focus more on the daily life of women and men, and as such do not only envisage formal work. Time-use studies generally point to inequalities in the division of work between men and women, where men generally are more active in formal, paid work whereas women do the lion’s share of the informal, often unpaid work. One of the strengths of time-use studies is that they bring the informal work, often performed by women and often neglected in official statistics, to the fore. However, most time-use studies are restricted to general indicators in terms of durations of activities. Durations are but one indicator to analyze differences and evolutions in time-use. Diary studies typically not only collect data on the duration of activities, but also contain information on the context of the activities, such as the timing and sequence of activities and with whom and where the activities were performed.

In this contribution we illustrate the use of different indicators to enrich the analysis of time-use data in terms of gender equality. We point to differences between women and men in the timing and fragmentation of activities, in multitasking, and interaction partners, and the impact of these differences in terms of gender inequality. We illustrate the potentials of data collected on a household level to study the interaction of activities between couples, and of time-use data enriched with subjective indicators, such as the purpose or the meanings of activities, to make more qualitative analyses possible. As such, time-use study can not only reveal differences in the amounts of work between sexes but bring gender differences in the quality of daily life in much more detail to the surface.

Counting women's work in the Philippines

Author: Michael Ralph Abrigo
Contributing author(s): Kris Francisco-Abrigo

Men and women play important and complementary roles in the economy. However, the activities that they perform are often valued differently if at all. In this study, we provide new estimates of the value of men and women’s work in the Philippines using the National Transfer Account and the National Time Transfer Account frameworks. We find that once the value of unpaid home production is taken into account, the contribution of men and women’s work are more equal compared to when only using the value of paid market work as metric. This is despite the activities that are largely performed by women being paid lower market wages. We also document strong association between parental time and child schooling outcomes, which further emphasizes the contribution of unpaid housework in the economy. 

Economic activity of women in Polish and Indian families – a historical analysis

Author: JYOTI THAKUR
Contributing author(s): Jacek Jankiewicz

Jyoti Thakur, Institute for Social and Economic change, India

Jacek Jankiewicz, Poznan University of Economics and Business, Poland

 

 

Economic activity of women in Polish and Indian families – a historical analysis

 

The presented analysis uses data from time-use surveys which were conducted in Poland and India in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For the latter country, the results of the 1998-1999 survey are currently the only available source of microeconomic statistical data on the time use of the population. In turn, when a time-use survey was conducted in the years 2003-2004, Poland was still considered to be a developing country.

The calculations made use of statistical information describing individual households and their members. The applied method of multiple regressions for cross-sectional data made it possible to take into account selected socio-demographic and economic characteristics of the analysed members of the population. The results obtained served as a basis for assessing the impact of such characteristics as marital status, children and family size on the production activity of women. The characteristics of the analysed women’s partners as well as their material status were also considered significant.

Separate calculations were made for people in specific age groups in order to present the time allocation of individuals with similar characteristics, but at different stages of their life cycle. When examining production activity both market and non-market spheres were taken into account, which is particularly important in developing countries.

Performing analogous estimations for Poland and India made it possible to directly compare the situation of women in these countries. Despite considerable differences in terms of social and cultural norms between the analysed societies, the situation of women living in them is in some respects similar. However, marked differences were also observed such as those related to economic activity depending on the level of education. Also, the influence of marriage on the allocation of time is different, as illustrated by comparing the situation of married women to those without a partner. In themselves the general characteristics of the samples considered in the analysis indicate significant differences between the societies of Poland and India. Although these differences hamper direct comparisons between the results of the calculations, at the same time they lead to formulating interesting conclusions.

 

 

 

Key words: Polish and Indian families; time allocation; economic activity of women; developing countries.

Visualizing the hidden dimensions of time-use data.

Author: Anaïs Glorieux
Contributing author(s): Joeri Minnen

Large scaled data-bases characterized by a lot of different variables, a wide variety of applications and a big diversity of data can be overwhelming and difficult to grasp. Especially when those databases include a temporal dimension. Although time use studies get a lot of coverage, even in more popular media, the reported analyses are often restricted to pure durations. Other dimensions of time use (such as timing, sequence, tempo, context, …) are often neglected because these analyses seem too complex to communicate to people who are foreign to the field of study. 

Visualizing these data is a suitable technique to make the complex and abundant information manageable and sharable, even with those who are not familiar with time use studies. This way, visualized data can serve as a way to give feedback to the respondents of a study or to present more complex analyses in the media.

In this presentation, several methods will be presented to visualize time-use data in R. R is a free and highly extensible software program. By offering different packages, R enables the user to carry out numerous statistical and graphical techniques. One of the strengths of R lies in the fact that it only uses coding as a way to execute actions, which facilitates the reproduction of the statistical executions and visualizations. 

The database used for this presentation provides data of more than 9,000 Flemish teachers collected in 2018. Using MOTUS software, they registered all their work and non-work activities for a full week. This resulted in a database comprising almost 1 million episodes. 

Unequal and Alone: How Marriage Stratifies Time Spent Alone by Sex, Race, and Education

Author: Kelsey Drotning

Recent data show that Americans are increasingly lonely. Popular media places the blame for the increase in loneliness on the popularity of social media and the rise of living alone. Although loneliness and spending time alone are not the same thing, a lack of contact with other people is a risk factor for poor mental and physical health. Previous research has shown that social isolation is linked to race, sex, and socioeconomic status. People who are married or in a cohabiting relationship demonstrate lower levels of social isolation than those who live alone. But do all race/sex groups experience the same decrease in social isolation as a benefit of marriage and cohabitation? I use an inter-categorical, intersectional framework to guide my analysis of how much time people spend alone, at home. Using the American Time Use Survey and OLS regression models, I measure how much time people spend alone in their own homes in separate models for eight race/sex groups. Results show that partnership status has a moderating relationship between demographic characteristics and how much time adults spend alone per day. Black women spend the most time alone while Hispanic men spend the least. Married White men spend 2.5 fewer hours alone per day than unmarried White men while Black men spend 2 fewer hours alone. The disparity between Black and White women is similar to that of men. White married women spend about 2 fewer hours alone than unmarried White women compared to Black married women who spend 1.5 fewer hours alone. This paper contributes to the sociological literature by measuring social isolation in a new way and empirically demonstrating how to measure marriage inequality.

The influence of housework hours on female labor force and its future measures in Japan

Author: Kiyomi Shirakawa

In Japan, the labor force population is decreasing with the declining birthrate and aging population. 

In order to raise the labor participation ratio and maintain the economic scale of the nation, it is important to utilize "women's labor force" which accounts for about half of the population. 

In particular, in women in Japan, retirement due to marriage is reduced, and an increase in managerial employment rate stabilizes labor supply. As a result, the full time housewife rate is decreased.

In this research, using the anonymous data of the Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities, we analyze the living behavior of Japanese married couple group. In this analysis, we empirically analyze the influence of Japanese living couple's living behavior on female managerial positions.

In the subject women, there is a positive relationship between "managerial position" and "age and working hours". Meanwhile, housework hours and meal management time on the working day have a negative influence on management positions.

However, the long meal management time indicates the high quality of meal in Japan.

This study assumes that home electric appliances with artificial intelligence (AI) function contribute to alleviate housework hours of women who have a negative influence on managerial positions. In addition, it keeps the high quality of meal by the home electric appliances with AI function. 

As a result, it becomes possible for women to reduce their housework hours and increase their working hours. 

Thus, by shortening the length of housework hours, the female managerial rate is expected to rise in the near future.

Unemployment and time spent in household production

Author: Jacek Jankiewicz
Contributing author(s): Przemysław Garsztka

Unemployment and time spent in household production

Human activity which aims to improve the quality of life and increase prosperity still remains largely outside the market sphere. Thus opinions are rightly voiced that the predictions of models that do not take into account non-market activity are to a large extent inadequate. Consequently, any conclusions drawn on their basis should not be the only guidelines for policies aimed at solving the problems of households. It is also easy to reach the conclusion that the assessment of the impact of changes in the level of unemployment on the welfare of individuals should also be adjusted according to the estimates of household production.

The aim of this study is to examine what part of an agent’s time released from market work may be used for production realised in the non-market sphere, depending on the socio-economic characteristics of households. Adopting the perspective of economic analysis and the management of the limited resources of families, we refer to the material side of the ambiguous concept of well-being and the role that consumption plays in this context. At the same time, we also draw attention to the importance of the non-market activity of women in creating well-being.

Micro-data from two Polish editions of time use surveys was used for the calculations. Our results show that when measuring the level of compensation for market work by household production it is worthwhile to refer to more detailed information than that pertaining to the whole population. This is demonstrated by significant differences in the values of the indicators; which range from 7 to 43 minutes for TUS 2004, and 4 to 42 minutes for TUS 2013. The scale of substitution in 2004 is greatest in the case of women, especially those who have the highest level of education (40-43 minutes); men to a lesser extent compensate for the loss of remunerative market activity with productive activity at home. But also in their case, having a child has a significant impact on their allocation of time: fathers are characterized by a higher degree of compensation compared to men without children.

Key words: time allocation; economic activity of women; unemployment; compensation for market work by household production

Developmental Activities and the Summer Setback: Does parents’ time spent with children vary by race?

Author: Corey Corey Culver
Contributing author(s): John Robert Warren

Racial and socio-economic gaps in educational achievement widen during the summer months and remain steady during the school year. What explains the “summer setback” documented in previous research? We analyze time-use data asking two questions: 1) Are there racial differences in the total amount of time parents spend with children outside of school during the summer, compared with the school year? 2) Are there racial differences in the type of activities parents engage in with their children during the summer compared to the school year? We hypothesize that racial/ethnic minority and low-SES parents spend less time engaging with children in educational, social capital, and cultural capital developmental activities, and racial and socioeconomic differences in such time-use will be larger in summer months as compared to academic year months. Using American Time Use Survey time diaries, we develop broader, richer measures of the activity’s parents engage in with children. This study goes beyond previously used activities focused on primary childcare to include reported developmental activities that contribute to educational development, social capital, and cultural capital. The aim of our research is to extend knowledge of parenting and the educational opportunity gap.

Trends in Older Women's and Men's Time Use in the United States, 1965-2012

Author: Sarah sarah flood
Contributing author(s): Phyllis Moen, Renada Goldberg, Katie Genadek

Over the past half century aging in the United States has been transformed, given improvements in life expectancy, educational attainment, and population health coupled with the unraveling of conventional retirement exits and protections.  Yet we know very little about how the day-to-day experiences of older men and women have changed—or remained stable—during this period. Using time diary data from the American Heritage Time Use Study from 1965–2012, we examine trends in older Americans’ time use in the United States in tandem with major shifts in later adult demography, workforce/retirement timing, and risk. We focus specifically on older (ages 50-65) women’s and men’s  participation in paid work, leisure, television watching, phyical activity, eating, and unpaid work, theorizing within-gender  historical changes as well as growing cross-gender convergence over time. We use decomposition analyses to consider whether patterns we observe are the result of changes in behavior or changing population composition.

Political strategy to increase timetable labor flexibility in Catalonia

Author: Serra Rovira Alexis
Contributing author(s): People from organisations with representative power to carry out social dialogue and reach agreements

Timetable reform is a citizens’ initiative proposing a change in scheduling so that we can have more freedom to manage our time. By synchronising our timetable habits with those of the rest of the world, with a more organised pace, we will buy time from time and, ultimately, improve our health and quality of life. Timetable reform promotes civilised scheduling habits, fostering equality, good relationships and above all, our health and well-being.

 

 In 2015, the private sector contributed 214.927 billion euros to Catalonia’s GDP. A total of 594,498 companies have their production and commercial establishments in Catalonia (37,208 from the industrial sector, 73,837 from the construction sector and 483,453 from the service sector). It employs 2,165,400 people, 85% of the Catalonia’s population.

 

The productive fabric will implement the change in line with the “Agreement to promote timetable reform at work: Ten objectives for collective bargaining” based on the principle of promoting the health of workers to be in synch with their circadian rhythms with regard to activity, meal and rest times (healthy timetables).

 

Catalan Goverment,  with the Timetable Reform Office and others departments and with the organisations with representative power to carry out social dialogue and reach agreements,  establishes a political strategy to reform the  timetable labor flexibility in Catalonia

 

 

The main objective of this strategie are:

 

Increasing work flexibility mechanisms

Increasing teleworking.

Reducing lunch breaks to maximum of one hour in organisations.

Having the working day end earlier.

Increasing productivity per hour worked.

Improving the competitiveness of organisations.

Reducing unjustified work absenteeism.

Applying the hours bank.

Reducing rotations within organisations.

Increasing the number of workers that eat at a healthy time.

 

A new initiative for a dialogue between scientist community and public policies

Author: Fabian Mohedano

Are scientists and politicians enemies or friends? Unlike, for example, medical or educational communities, time use researchers community is not strong nor recognized enough or able to transform society. To strength the visibility of the time use community politicians and researchers have to cooperate on a regular basis. The dialogue between ideas and reality is necessary but we are lacking the appropriate tools.

 

The local, national as well as international time use communities should collaborate to ease communication between scientific and public institutions and  to help implementing new policies for more permanent changes.

 

Barcelona is a pioneer city in time use policies and recently has renewed the commitment to the new “Pacte del Temps” (Time Agreement). Moreover, Catalonia has recently signed the “Pacte per la Reforma Horària” (Agreement for the Time Use Reform). These processes have been possible thanks to the existing local time use associations which pressure the public institutions and the collaboration among politicians and researchers.

 

This paper presents the “Barcelona Time Use Initiative for a Healthy Society”. This newly created initiative aims to become a space for the dialogue between scientists and politicians. This dialogue will encompass the most important research areas: decent work, efficient companies, gender equality, education, sustainable cities, sleep time, and healthy society. This initiative has currently a database with more than 100 relevant players on the time use initiative and pretends to start doing the first events during the 2019.

Employment type and housework participation of Japanese men and women

Author: Ekaterina Hertog

Employment has changed dramatically over the past decades in the developed world. On the one hand, the improvements in women’s labour market access have meant that more women than before are able to have careers, work continuously in regular employment and even rise through the ranks, securing managerial jobs and potentially starting their own businesses and hiring people. On the other hand, the labour market has become increasingly precarious for young men and women in the developed world, meaning that many recent graduates have to content themselves with contingent jobs that provide little in terms of benefits and do not offer the security of the regular employment.

Different types of employment statuses have profound effects on family transitions of young adults and precarious jobs in the U.S. have been linked to extreme disadvantage when it comes to domestic division of labour.

This paper investigates the effects of employment type on the gendered division of labour at home in Japan, where there are rigid family norms and the male-breadwinner tradition still prevails.

The authors divide employment into broadly three categories: high employment status: managers and owners of businesses with employees, regular employment, and different types of contingent work. Contingent work includes part-time jobs, contract employment in which employees work similar hours to those in a regular job, but have no entitlement for benefits, and little job security, family employees and piece workers at home. We analyse how different employment types are associated with housework load, while controlling for typical weekly paid work hours and whether the patterns differ by sex and marital status. Using recent nationally representative time use survey from Japan, we find that unmarried men’s housework time largely independent of their employment status or typical work hours. This is not the case for unmarried women. Part-time employment is associated with longer time spent on housework, even controlling for typical work hours. Large amounts of overtime work (at least 8 hours of overtime weekly) are associated with significantly less time spent on housework by unmarried women. Finally, shorter working hours (less than 40 hours weekly) are associated with longer time spent on housework for women in all types of employment with the exception of women who own businesses that have employees.  The situation is very different for married men and women. First, married men’s housework time is much more responsive to their employment type and typical work hours. These men do a bit more housework if they are in part-time employment and less housework if they own companies with employees. They also do a bit more housework if they typically work less than 40 hours weekly and less housework if they work large amounts of overtime (49 or more hours spent on paid work weekly). Working overtime is also associated with additional reductions in housework time for men in contingent jobs. In contracts to men for whom increases in housework time are largely negatively associated with the status of their employment type, the same is not the case for married women. Married women who are not in regular jobs do more housework. This is true for both high achieving women, like company managers, or women in contingent employment. Married female company managers only reduce their housework time to the level of regular female employees only if they work 49 hours or more weekly. The implications of these large inequalities in the domestic division of labour for women’s ability to establish and develop careers are discussed.

Domestic division of labour in the multigenerational households in contemporary Japan

Author: Ekaterina Hertog
Contributing author(s): Man-Yee Kan

Intergenerational co-residence is much more prevalent in East Asian countries, such as Japan, compared to western developed countries. Intergenerational co-residence has been linked to a number of family outcomes, such as progression to marriage and childbearing, women’s ability to continue to participate in the labour market after they have children, as well as well-being of family members providing care work.

In this paper, we use data from the Japanese Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities to analyse how the characteristics of co-resident elderly, especially their age and whether they are husband’s or wife’s parents affect the middle generation’s time use. We find that co-residing with parents enables men to devote more time to paid work and less time to unpaid work, especially if they co-reside with their own parents. For women, the outcome depends to a large extent on whether they co-reside with their own or their husband’s parents. Co-residing with own parents is associated with more time spent on paid work and less on housework and care as long as these parents are younger than 80 years of age.

Occupational Earnings Inequality and Time Use in the United States

Author: Younghwan Song

Bell and Freeman (2001) find that because of greater earnings inequality, American workers work more hours than those in other developed countries. They also find that long hours worked increase wages and promotion prospects in the future. Hamermesh and Stancanelli (2015) further show that American workers are more likely to work at night and on weekends than workers elsewhere.

Using wage/salary workers’ time use data drawn from the 2003-2017 American Time Use Surveys and occupational earnings inequality data drawn from the 2003-2017 Current Population Surveys, this paper examines how earnings inequality in occupations is associated with various categories of time use and work schedule in the United States.

Preliminary results show that workers in occupations with greater inequality in pay are, in addition to working longer hours, more likely to work at night and on weekends than other workers. They also spend more time on work-related activities, such as socializing, eating/drinking, and sports/exercise as part of job, although they spend less time on their own leisure activities. Finally, these workers also spend more time on education than other workers. These findings are more consistent with incentive/tournament models than with human capital models.

Child Support, Foster Care and Care Dependency Grants and Time Use in South Africa

Author: Tanima Ahmed

The traditional concept of well-being only gives attention to materials goods and services. However, well-being is also about ‘how people use their time.’ The individual welfare reduces due to stress and fatigue from the long workday, or higher work intensity. Because the poor cannot afford market substitutes for their time, higher work-intensity or long workday is more visible in poor households, specifically for the female members of the household. The research objective of this study is to examine the relationship between child support, foster care and care dependency grants and gendered time allocation of the individuals across market work, household and care work, leisure, personal care, and other non-work activities in South Africa. Existing literature focus on the effect of government grants on the labor force participation of the caregivers or household members. However, to the best of my knowledge, none of the papers have assessed the relationship between child support, foster care, and care dependency grants and the time use adjustment, i.e., non-monetary aspects of the well-being of the household members. To assess the relationship between grants receipt and time use adjustment I use the 2010 South Africa Time Use Survey. I apply a unique approach of estimating a multivariate (Seemingly Unrelated Regression) model, with five correlated systems of equations of time allocation. The preliminary findings highlight an important aspect of the gender inequalities in the time allocation of the poor employed individuals aged 16 to 64 years. Childcare grant receipt is associated with women spending more time in caregiving, and to balance, they reduce their time from other non-work activities. Because women are more involved in the caregiving, the findings indicate that the child support grant may lengthen the workday for women. As such, careful targeting of the care related grant is required to avoid any worsening in gender inequality.

Dual earner couples’ income effects on doing sport activities in South Korea.

Author: IkHyun Joo

In this paper, I focus on income effects on doing sport activities because sports time is very important to health. Especially, I compare wives’ sport time factors with their husbands’. Previous studies analyze relationships between personal income and sport activities and they address that people do more sport activities when they get higher income. However, other scholars claim that there are confounded spouse effects. Actually, couple members could use their spouse’ income. Then, in order to confirm relations between income and amounts of time to do sport activities, we should consider couples’ total income and income contribution rate. Total income means economic resource and income contribution rate means that bargaining power between husbands and wives. Generally, those who get higher income than their spouse could do anything that they want to do easily although their spouse disagree this time use. I analyze Korean Time Use Survey data in 2014. According to the results, couples’ total income has positive effects on husbands’ sports time but it is not statistically significant to wives sports time. Meanwhile, there is U shape relations between income contribution rate and wives’ sports time. There is no statistically significant effect between income contribution rate and husband sports time. These results imply that husbands can use their spouse economic resources with no strings attached but wives cannot like them in South Korea. This might be one of the reasons why wives health level is always lower than their husbands.

The Determinants of Self-rated Job demands amongst Early Childhood Educators and Carers

Author: Michael Bittman
Contributing author(s): Judith E. Brown, Linda Harrison

Conventional time use surveys reveal little information about the time spent in paid work. This presentation reports on a study of Early Childhood Educators and Carers (ECEC), collected using the ‘intensive hour’ technique using respondents’ own smartphone. The technique collects random one-hour samples of respondents working time. When notified, the subjects respond about the previous 60 minutes, recording time allocated to primary and secondary tasks .Curremt;y 289 educators and carers have supplied 2,984 sample hours, yielding data adata about 8,351 episodes of employment-related activities. The software is programmed to also capture characteristics of the individual and their workplace, information about context of the activity and, importantly, a self-rating of job demands on a scale out of 10 during the sampled hour. Respondents rate the intensity of pace of hours’ work, the extent of multiple demands, estimate their level of stress and their job satisfaction.

Having this data provides unique insight into the texture subjective experience of working in this occupation.  The outstanding characteristic of this occupation is the rapid switching of tasks, and the juggling of many demands, from a multitude of children under the worker’s care. The modal episode length is 6 minutes (the minimum possible) and 61% of activity episodes include a simultaneous activity. The modal number of children under the employees care is six or more children. Preliminary analysis indicates that the self-rated items on the pace of work, multiple demands/frequent switching of tasks and stress load into a single factor which we call ‘job demands’. Linear modelling of the intensity of job demands shows that working in a pre-school, rather than a long-day care centre; and dealing with children under 3 years of age increase the experience of intensity of job demands. The duration of time spent doing emotional care, communicating with parents and family, doing ‘routine’ childcare activities (associated with hygiene, nutrition, health, rest/sleep and transitions between activities) and organising/maintaining equipment and facilities are significantly related the experience of intensified job demands. Being away from children, doing activities such as staff development, predictably, significantly reduce the intensity if experienced job demands.

Life satisfaction and social activities in later life: the role of gender and living arrangement

Author: Maria Letizia Tanturri
Contributing author(s): Annalisa Donno, Silvia Meggiolaro

 

As societies age, increasingly attention has been paid on the older adults and on how they age ‘successfully’. Life satisfaction (LS) is usually considered a key indicator to measure successful aging and wellbeing among older people.

Research has shown that being active is an important determinant of life satisfaction among older adults. In particular, the activity theory of ageing emphasizes the link between an active lifestyle and wellbeing in older age. Participation in activities should provide, indeed, opportunities for the role supports that are necessary for maintaining a positive self-concept in older ages. In addition activities connected with physical activity may improve health and physical functioning, which in turn are beneficial for LS as well.

In fact, not only the level of activity is important but also its social dimension: the greater the frequency of activity and the more the activity implies social engagement, the higher the wellbeing is. Research has, indeed, stressed the importance of social relationships for LS. Rowe and Hahn (1997) themselves in their definition of successful ageing posed social engagement as one of the major elements. Thus, both the time spent on activity and the social dimension of the activity should be considered.

In this paper we study how being active is connected with wellbeing among older people. In addition, we focus on the social dimension of active ageing, under the hypothesis that spending out time with other people, regardless of the activity performed, is associated to higher level of wellbeing. As, literature suggests that the determinants of LS may differ by gender and living arrangements, we carry out separate analysis accordingly.

We select  a subsample of 12,247 individuals, aged 60 years and over from the 2015-2016 Italian Time Use Survey. We focus on self-reported LS (10 point Likert scale) and take into account the time spent in passive activities (passive leisure, sleeping, personal care) and active pursuits (social activities, sports, hobbies, cultural activities, caregiving, transports, work, housework).

We run OLS regression model, by sex and living arrangements. Preliminary results show that being active is important for LS but the type of activity linked to LS differs by gender and living arrangement. Our hypothesis that social activity is associated with LS is not confirmed, but, interestingly, the proportion of leisure activities spent with other people is important only for older adults not living alone, regardless of the sex.

When You Need to Move Fast but Refuse to Break Things: Conducting Foundation-Supported Rigorous Public-Facing Time Use Research

Author: Boroka Bo
Contributing author(s): Denys Dukhovnov, Vanessa Goh

A growing body of research has brought attention to the immense practical potential of using and structuring time as a resource in K-12 schools, with teaching and learning outcomes in mind. However, little is known about ways in which public schools tangibly structure time when found in markedly different political and economic contexts across the US. Up until now, mechanisms that underly temporal decisions affecting student learning made by teachers and administrators remained equally obscure and unsubstantiated by large-scale representative data. The current study begun with the ambitious goal of collecting data from a representative sample of US K-12 schools (N=10,000; public and private) to examine how educators think about and make decisions related to structuring time in primary and secondary schools. With support from the Gates Foundation and Abl Schools, we developed an innovative data collection methodology, tapping into the limitless enthusiasm and unbounded energy of a group of several dozen undergraduate students within the scope of a service-learning data science course. Keeping our data quality goals on the forefront, we collected, cleaned and analyzed our data in just under 4 months. Using this innovative data set, we present the first-ever portrait of time in schools throughout the United States. Our preliminary results offer a compelling variety of time structure profiles, illustrating a remarkably broad spectrum of school time management practices. We conclude with lessons learned from conducting public-facing high-impact research, as well as by laying out the next steps and plans for our second wave of data collection examining the temporal structure and experiences of students and parents. 

The use of sensors and geofencing in time use research. The case of the Brussels Pedestrian Zone.

Author: Joeri Minnen
Contributing author(s): Ignace Glorieux

Mobile devices are omnipresent in people’s daily live. A smartphone is used to make calls, to search for information on the web, to schedule appointments, to take pictures, to stroll the social media, … . Today the opportunities are nearly endless, and there is more since smart devices also include multiple sensors. These sensors send out signals that can be recorded by an application, like the MOTUS-app, and uploaded to a server, like the MOTUS-server. By processing these signals, behavioural indicators can be derived and used for scientific purposes.One of these behavioural indicators is the location of the smart device; which can be seen as a proxy of the users location. This service is of particular interest for the Project ‘Forum Vies Mobiles’ where the newly constructed Pedestrian Zone in the Brussels City Center is the research zone, and the project aim is to understand how the development of the pedestrian zone impacts the lifestyle of the users. To receive a clearer view on the interaction between the Pedestrian Zone and their users, invited respondents are asked to download the MOTUS-app and to keep a 2 week online time diary. Every time the respondent enters or leaves the Pedestrian Zone extra questions are triggered. In order to achieve this, the Pedestrian Zone is defined as a geofence. To have even a more accurate sensing the Pedestrian Zone was further divided in 5 different zones. Each zone has a radius of 150m or a diameter of 300m, and in total about 0,5km2 is covered. Besides triggering extra contextual questions, the geofence also switches on/off the gps-tracking (acceleration and gravity). With this function information is gathered about physical activities (a) like the amount of steps, walking, running, etc. and (b) the transportation mode like on foot and by car at the moment the respondent enters a geofence and stops when the respondent goes out of the Pedestrian Zone. Outside the geofence no gps-tracking is done to save battery life.This presentation will highlight the possibilities of sensors and geofencing within scientific research, and presents the results of the study together with the user profiles of the respondents in their interaction with the Pedestrian Zone in Brussels.

Modernizing time use surveys in line with international standards and using the latest technologies

Author: Harumi Shibata Salazar
Contributing author(s): United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD)

Reliable time use statistics have been critical for (a) the measurement and analysis of quality of life or general well-being; (b) a more comprehensive measurement of all forms of work, including unpaid work and non-market production and the development of household production accounts; and for (c) producing data to inform and monitor gender policies. Time-use statistics can further supplement information to other statistical areas, such as: education (learning patterns), health (physical activity patterns, feeding patters, sleep patterns, etc.), culture (involvement), environment (access to water, sanitation and clean energy), social behaviors, involvement in civic activities, use of ICT, etc. However, collection of time-use information is challenging for national statistical offices given the complexity of field operations and data processing, the high cost involved, and the high respondents’ burden resulting in low response rates. Complexity of time-use datasets limits the possible users, and in general time-use data are underutilized. The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), together with experts and partners, is developing methodological guidelines on how to modernize time-use surveys in line with international standards and using the latest technologies.

Invisible workforce and simultaneous paid and unpaid work: What time use data reveals?

Author: Fareena Malhi

This paper underscores the problem of invisible labor force participation in developing countries despite measures taken to account for informal employment, with the aid of Time Use data. In addition, it demonstrates, that invisible workforce has lower welfare compared to people who do a similar type of work but is reported. Using Pakistan as a case study, I first identify the invisible workforce comparing the estimated participation rates of women and men from two sources namely: the standard survey questions to identify the labor force status and the time use diary data of the individuals. Next, I determine the characteristics of the invisible labor. Finally, I examine the association between simultaneous paid and unpaid work in the same location and participation in invisible labor. My results indicate that apart from not being accounted for in national statistics driving the policies, invisible labor (of which 85% are females) does a greater proportion of simultaneous paid and unpaid work, reducing their welfare through higher stress and diminished productivity.

 

Developing the Finnish XCola online diary

Author: Hannu Pääkkönen
Contributing author(s): HAARAMO, Juha & KALLIO-PELTONIEMI, Merja & TUOMOLA, Taneli

Statistics Finland has conducted four nationally representative time use surveys based on paper diaries filled in by respondents, later coded by the agency. The next Finnish Time Use Survey is planned to be conducted in 2020. According to the strategy of Statistics Finland, a web questionnaire will be offered as an alternative in all household surveys. An online XCola diary will be developed to be used together with a paper diary. XCola (XML based collection application) is a scalable web application used thus far for business surveys. No separate mobile app will be developed. A prototype of the online diary as well as experiences from the preliminary in-house user tests will be presented.

Time saving strategies in case of Hungary and Korea

Author: Johanna Giczi
Contributing author(s): Eun Ki-Soo

An accelerating rhythm of our lives, the changing social norms it entails, and individual socio-cultural preferences are special characteristics of our modern society. As a result of this new type of social and economic environment the lives of the majority of society have accelerated. This phenomenon – together with the ideals of productivity and mainly effectiveness – has entailed significant changes in the allocation of time: these changes can clearly be recognized and identified within the texture of society. However, time pressure or lack of time, as well as the resulting stress are not new. At the same time, due to social changes and an accelerating lifestyle time pressure has never been so stressful to people.

Based on Hungarian and Korean TUS data, our research focused on time saving strategies. Our hypothesis was that strategies for managing time pressure are mainly used by stressed individuals, in the case of people who are not stressed, one cannot find such systems. When analyzing societal time allocation structures and the daily rhythm of time use, by calculating the Twad-index (which is an indicator for analyzing structural shifts), we show how different groups of society devote time to a certain activity, what differences there are between the time use habits of the two groups, and how all this relates to time deficit.As a next step following the examination of the activity structure, we also analysed the quantity aspect of time deficit in detail, supposing that time taken away from night – as a strategy used for alleviating quantity time deficit – can mainly be shown among those suffering from time pressure. Along these ideas – taking into account the theoretical work of Melbin – we analysed the characteristics of time spent on (or not spent on) sleeping, with special regard to the group suffering from time deficit. We show that if we take into account the time deficit factor, there are massive differences concerning taking away time from the night. When considering time changes in connection with the borders of night, we set up models in which we estimated the effect intensity of the given dimension and the differences between the years, using regression formulas. The indexes showing the borders of night were used as dependent variables; the explanatory variables were the dichotomic stress variable and the year of the survey. In order to be able to understand the characteristics of time deficit in detail, in the next part of the analysis we examined the correlation between activities – using flexibility calculations. In the standard deviation and relative standard deviation analyses used for the flexibility indexes estimated in hours (minutes) we found that concerning time devoted to paid work males are the least flexible, while stressed women handle the flexibility of time for paid work in the same way as time devoted to unpaid household chores. As for stressed women, this could also be interpreted as a certain manifestation of time pressure resulting from a so-called patriarchal time regime, which strengthens the entrenchment of traditional female roles in society. We described such inflexibility of time management with the term „time vise.

With the other calculation connected to flexibility coefficients we wanted to find out that if the duration of activity “A” increased by one hour, then how much and to which direction would the duration of action “B” change; in other words, to what extent activity “B” changes by increasing the duration of activity A by 1 hour or 1 per cent. The data given in minutes were estimated using linear regression models, and for measuring the changes in percentages I set up log-log models.

On the relation between nonresponse and nonresponse bias: How nonresponse in time use surveys does not cause much bias.

Author: Petrus te Braak

Time use research has historically developed in order to gain insight in the patterns of time use activities for the purposes of organising public life, such as working hours, traffic, non-work-related activities, et cetera. Such insights assume that parameters are estimated correctly. The presence of nonresponse bias, however, raises the question to what extent these parameters are actually correct. This contribution examines the extent to which parameters in online time use surveys differ under influence of nonresponse bias. 

We will use data from a time use study that we the Research Group TOR conducted in 2013. Respondents were asked to fill in a pre-questionnaire, a seven-day time diary and a post-questionnaire. On the basis of these data, it was investigated in an earlier phase which groups are over- and underrepresented in the data. For this contribution, we will now turn to how this leads to bias. This will be done by comparing estimates with other data in order to identify the direction and magnitude of nonresponse bias, by comparing estimators between different groups on the basis of timing of response and by re-estimating parameters after implementing post-survey adjustment methods such as weighting. 

We will show that, despite high nonresponse, time use surveys do not suffer much from nonresponse bias. 

The Influence of Private Education and Public Educational Service on School Life Adaptation and Academic Stress among Adolescents of Multicultural Families

Author: JOOSOO BYUN
Contributing author(s): Jingya Ding, and Meejung Chin

The purpose of this study is two folds: first, we examine the factors affecting the private education participation and time use among multicultural families’ adolescents who are educationally disadvantaged, and second, we examine the effects of private education and public educational service on their school life adaptation and academic stress.

Using the 2015 National Multicultural Families Survey conducted by Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, we selected 4,209 adolescents aged 9 to 23 in elementary or secondary school, who haveone parent of foreign nationality. This data set includes rich information on marriage migrant women and their families including time use and various outcomes. We used multiple regression and Tobit models to analyze participation, time use, school life adaptation, and academic stress among adolescents. 

The main results are as follows:  First, the level of the fathers’ education and household income had positive effects on private education participation and time use of multicultural families’ adolescents. Second, education and the Korean-proficiency of both adolescents and the mothers, had a positive effect on the school life adaptation and a negative effect on the academic stress. Third, the private education participation and time use of multicultural families’ adolescents had a positive effect on the school life adaptation and a negative effect on the academic stress. Lastly, the participation on local youth study facilities and social welfare centers increased their school life adaptation and decreased the academic stress.

The conclusions based on the results of the analysis are as follows: The adolescents of multicultural families showed that the more they participated in private education, the higher their adaptation to school life. However, the participation of private education depended largely on the socioeconomic level of multicultural families. Using public educational services was partly related to enhancement of school adaptation and low academic stress. Therefore, it is necessary to provide supplementary public education services to economically disadvantaged multicultural families. These services are of particular importance as the school life adaptation is a key to successful development and transition to adulthood.

Active Travel Using wearable technology to analyse travel behaviour

Author: Teresa Harms
Contributing author(s): Cate Pattison (University of Western Australia)

 

The health benefits of active travel are well documented. Promoting Active Travel (AT) is important and timely because decreasing levels of physical activity (PA) and increasing sedentary behaviour (SB) have led to rising levels of obesity and prevalence of chronic conditions such as hypertension, cardio-vascular disease and diabetes. Increasing active modes of travel has been the focus of a number of health promotion programmes because it enables commuters to combine active travel modes and public transport (e.g. walk-and-ride or bike-and-ride). This provides opportunities to increase PA as part of the daily routine. A number of studies report that incorporating walking or cycling into longer journeys can provide over half of the weekly-recommended PA Guidelines from the commute alone.

 

Most household travel surveys use travel diaries, logs and recall questionnaires, with or without GPS tracking. Studies without GPS often fail to provide detailed temporally valid location information and respondents often have incomplete spatial knowledge, so tend to approximate durations and sucumb to recall bias. Although travel diaries and logs include detailed information on trip origin and destination (O-D), duration, and travel party, the motivations for decision-making about travel mode, destination, route and its association with other daily routines and activities are largely unknown.

 

The goal of this multidisciplinary proof-of-concept study was to test and evaluate a unique combination of data collection instruments and techniques. A sample (n=80) participants in desk-based (sedentary) occupations were asked to wear a smartwatch and complete a time-use diary for two consecutive weekdays. They also wore a video camera, but only whilst travelling (commuting and all other travel), followed by an interview a few days later.

 

The smartwatch gathered data on participants’ daily PA (step count, distance, covered, heart rate, intensity minutes, stress levels, sleep) and GPS locations across the day, including travel episodes. The wearable camera recorded precisely-timed visual data about participants’ daily travel routines. In addition to the objective data from the wearable devices, participants provided self-report data by completing a time-use diary (in 5-min timeslots) about their daily activities and undertaking a post data collection interview, where they viewed the video footage and reported on their travel experiences.

 

The objective data (smartwatch and camera) provided precisely-timed accounts of daily travel and other activities and allowed cross-validation of the GPS and PA data. The self-report data (time-use diary and interview) provided a deeper understanding of the value of time (VOT) and illuminated the diverse contextual factors that affect people’s daily activities, including decisions about travel. The combined data provided detailed information about mode choice (according to the trip purpose/s and accounting for the household constraints), travel conditions (e.g. congestion, crowding, weather, travel companions) and insights into local travel contexts (e.g. built environment, route characteristics, quality of amenities).

 

Active travel programs that accommodate different life-stages, lifestyles and daily routines are more likely to succeed if they are informed by data gathered in real-life (free-living) conditions. The data from this study will complement the ‘gaps’ in traditional household travel surveys, generate a range of case studies, and enable travel apps to become more personalised and informative.

 

Hidden Contribution of Women and Their Well Being: A Measurement Issue

Author: harpreet kaur

 

The conventional data on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can not include the value of goods and services produced within the household for self consumption. However, the value of such goods and services has been estimated up to 50 percent to 60 percent of the national GDP. So there is a need to arrive at better estimator of the value of such goods and services, because the exclusion of these unpaid non-marketed activities reduces the cross country comparability of the national income of countries. Ignorance of these activities underestimates the income and overestimates the poverty of developing countries. Women worldwide perform the vast majority of domestic tasks, including both household maintenance and childcare, even when they are employed part or full time, the mean time spent on unpaid care work by women is more than twice that for men. But the latter largely goes unreported in the accounting framework of System of National Accounts (SNA) even though the households derive significant amount of utility from these activities. The regular statistical measures ignore the subsistence work and household production but the time use data make visible the invisible, unpaid and underpaid work done by men and women. It recognizes the importance of crucial housekeeping, family care and in house value addition and labour provided by the family members to each other.

 

In the present paper an attempt has been made to show the effect of unpaid domestic work on the Time Poverty among the women and its effect on the well Being Index of women. We also show the contribution of unpaid domestic work in monetary terms in the GDP of a country for this purpose we study the time use survey and do a comparative analysis of men and women. We also calculate the subjective well being of women and show their contribution in the decision making power at the household level for this purpose we use likert scale.

 

Hidden Contribution of Women and Their Well Being: A Measurement Issue

Author: Gurjinder Singh

 

The conventional data on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can not include the value of goods and services produced within the household for self consumption. However, the value of such goods and services has been estimated up to 50 percent to 60 percent of the national GDP. So there is a need to arrive at better estimator of the value of such goods and services, because the exclusion of these unpaid non-marketed activities reduces the cross country comparability of the national income of countries. Ignorance of these activities underestimates the income and overestimates the poverty of developing countries. Women worldwide perform the vast majority of domestic tasks, including both household maintenance and childcare, even when they are employed part or full time, the mean time spent on unpaid care work by women is more than twice that for men. But the latter largely goes unreported in the accounting framework of System of National Accounts (SNA) even though the households derive significant amount of utility from these activities. The regular statistical measures ignore the subsistence work and household production but the time use data make visible the invisible, unpaid and underpaid work done by men and women. It recognizes the importance of crucial housekeeping, family care and in house value addition and labour provided by the family members to each other.

 

In the present paper an attempt has been made to show the effect of unpaid domestic work on the Time Poverty among the women and its effect on the well Being Index of women. We also show the contribution of unpaid domestic work in monetary terms in the GDP of a country for this purpose we study the time use survey and do a comparative analysis of men and women. We also calculate the subjective well being of women and show their contribution in the decision making power at the household level for this purpose we use likert scale.

 

Time-Use Policy or Flexibility? Working time policymaking in Sweden

Author: Uffe Enokson

 

Time-Use Policy or Flexibility?

 

Working time policymaking in Sweden

 

 

 

Uffe Enokson

 

Department of Social Work

 

Linnaeus University, 351 95 Växjö, Sweden

 

+46 (0)725941668, uffe.enokson@lnu.se

 

 

 

Oral presentation. Theme: Societal trends in time-use

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract

 

The aim of this article is to create an understanding of Swedish national working time regulations in a document study of Swedish working time policy from 1911 onwards. What arguments for or against a general reduction in working time are presented in official reports, bills and department publications? On the one hand, a time-use problem is identified, depending on the distribution of work. Increased working hours for women, and especially working mothers, pose a risk of less leisure time, less time spent with family and friends, less time for domestic work and less time spent on activities in civil society. This, it was argued, is especially tough for families with small children. On the other hand, the inquiries warned of another problem: the lack of flexibility in working time arrangements. The lack of flexibility was a threat to fluctuations in the global economy. The flexibility concept required local working time adaptation and raised questions about when and where to work. It also questioned traditional working contracts of permanent employment. Results shows that working time policy goals have changed, from being anchored in a social discourse to being rooted in an economic one. This changes the position of working time as an important instrument in the socio-political discourse and makes the reduced working time agenda fade in the light of economic goals such as expansion, growth and flexible working time arrangements. The theoretical approach is based on a policy theory where four different levels of political policymaking are discovered.

 

 

 

Keywords: Time-use policy, flexibility, working time,Nordic welfare state, work-life balance

 

How Ethiopians’ Use Their Time?

Author: Asalfew Abera Gebere

The first ever Time Use Survey was conducted in Ethiopia in February 2013 by CSA. It was designed to measure time spent on paid, unpaid work and non-productive activities during the 24 hours of persons aged 10 years and older. A two stage stratified random sampling design was used to select samples of 20,280 HHs and 52,262 persons aged 10 years and older from rural and urban areas. The result of the survey explained using participation rate and average time spent of actors. The participation on SNA activities was higher for both men (78%) and women (79%) in rural areas, likely because of rural agricultural activities in primary production. However, average time spent in SNA activities was greater in urban areas (500 minutes for men Vs 340 minutes for women). Women’s participation and time spent in water and fuel collection far outpaced than men. This highlights the strong norms about the role of women and girls in these activities. On the other hand, substantial gender inequalities are evident in time spent on Extended SNA works (unpaid works). The time spent on extended SNA work was higher in rural areas (243 minutes for men Vs 354 minutes for women). The limited access to resources among rural households may therefore, increase responsibilities in extended SNA activities.  In specific terms, women in rural and urban areas spend more time (74, 54 minutes respectively) on child care than men (8 minutes). But men spend more time on adult care. Time spent on non-productive activities also tends to be lower for girls and women. Thus, these gender inequality demands further research and policy intervention to close the gap.

How do parents feel about time with children? Does the gender of the child matter?

Author: Daniela Negraia
Contributing author(s): Joint authorship

Using time-use and subjective well-being measures from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) (2003-2017) and ATUS’s Wellbeing Module (waves 2010, 2012, 2013), we examine if, and how, child gender influence’s mother’s and father’s emotional states (feelings of happiness, stress, etc.) during time with children, at various parity levels, and child developmental stages. Results from random effect models reveal that overall, mothers and fathers experience similar positive emotions with girls and boys, and that both mothers and fathers report greater negative emotions with girls (than boys)– particularly in 1 child families. Variation is greater for mothers (than fathers) especially across child age. Mothers report greater fatigue with girls (than boys) of young ages (0-2 years, 3-5 years), and lower happiness and meaning with adolescent girls than boys. Given persistent gaps in childcare time between mothers and fathers particularly for daughters, we also examine whether men who report more favorable emotions during time spent with daughters report a greater amount of time spent with them. 

Examining Differences Between Time Use Survey Respondents and Cases Flagged as Ineligible: Is Poor Data Quality the Result of Respondent Characteristics or Data Collection Strategies?

Author: David Biagas
Contributing author(s): Polly Phipps

The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) is a nationally representative survey of respondents who have completed the 8th and final interview of the Current Population Survey (CPS). Rather than collecting data on the entire household, the ATUS only collects information for one household member, a person at least 15 years old who is randomly selected from the household roster obtained in the CPS. Respondents are interviewed by telephone and, in addition to providing updated labor force data, report time-use data for a 24 hour period starting at 4 a.m. the preceding day.  Analyses of ATUS data reveal that a non-negligible number of cases are flagged as being of lower quality and are excluded from analyses. This is either because respondents report fewer than 5 activities or because they are unable or unwilling to report their activities for 3 or more hours of the day.

This research examines how the characteristics of cases flagged as ineligible differ from those that remain in the final ATUS sample. In particular, differences in demographic characteristics reported on the CPS are examined to assess if the exclusion of these cases potentially affects the representativeness of the ATUS. In addition, analyses explore if data collection factors that may be linked to lower data quality, such as the time of data collection, the day of activities for which respondents are reporting, and the presence or absence of minors in the home, are associated with being flagged as ineligible. Finally, this research examines if ineligible respondents have a different propensity to complete surveys (e.g., previous information was reported by a proxy respondent in the CPS, the respondent served as the reference person in the CPS, and the completion status on ATUS) than respondents in the final ATUS sample. Overall, the results suggest that differences between ineligible cases and the final ATUS sample are more directly linked to differences in the personal characteristics of respondents (e.g., age and socioeconomic status), than data collection factors believed to reduce the quality of the ATUS data. Though differences in the most frequently reported activities between these two sub-groups are briefly examined, future research is needed to assess whether the exclusion of these cases potentially affects the estimates produced for the ATUS.

An attempt to identifiy and quantify time devoted to animals in the daily life of French citizens

Author: Cécile Brousse

 

The presentation purpose is to suggest a method to value the time devoted to animal care and use (farm animals and pets). Two issues have to be solved. Firstly, though 2010 French Time Use survey identifiesfeeding and caring quiet accuratly, a large number of activities related to animals are scattered inotheritems ofACTUS : livestock raising for business purposes, cage or bedding cleaning,playing with animals, cuddling, animal oriented leisure activities (horse riding, visiting zoos, hunting and fishing), not to mention activities carried out in the presence of animals that could have been accomplished otherwise(walking,socializing...). The second problem is that some of these activities are eluded in the data collection process; (1) some are too short to be memorised or quoted (feeding the dog), (2) others are mentionned as secondary(watching TV/while cuddling the cat), finally(3) others are not coded because they appear in second or third place on the line of the diary. Among the 27 400diaries written by the respondents in 2010 TUS, 8 900 episodes out of 740 000 are related to animal keeping or use. They have been coded into an ad-hoc classificationusing textual analysis tools. These nomenclature allows to providea narrow and a large definition of daily activities related to animals. Then several estimates of the amount of time spent on animalistic activities are outlined that may help to minimise under or misreporting cases (problems 2 and 3). In the end, time devoted to animals isanalysed by group of population (age, gender, family status, social class),category of housing (allotment,housing project, farm) and the possessed type of animal,thanks tousual concepts in time use research. The challenge of the presentation is to set out results clearly and appropriately on a matter that cannot help but interest a broad audience. To make the presentation more stimulating, extracts of written diaries will be displayed as well as graphs resulting from texts respons analysis.

 

Paid Family Leave and Unpaid Work

Author: Shirin Arslan
Contributing author(s): Tanima Ahmed

Paid Family Leave (PFL) policy entitles workers to take paid time off from work to care for a child, an elder or a sick family member. When extended to both women and men, PFL may support egalitarian division of labor by pushing women into labor market while pulling men towards household work and care work. Currently lacking a federal level guarantee of paid leave, U.S. workers struggle to patch together paid and unpaid leave to care for their families, which perpetuates the unequal shouldering of household work, care work and market work by women and men.

Using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) Leave Module for 2011, we investigate the influence of employer-provided paid leave entitlements on mothers’ and fathers’ time-use behavior with respect to market work and non-market work. We examine the links between access to PFL and time spent on market work, household work, care work in order to evaluate the degree to which access to PFL reinforces egalitarian division of labor.

 

We expect the results to reveal the egalitarian potentials of paid leave entitlements – whether or not it can serve as a precondition to men’s and women’s equal participation in market work and non-market work such as child care and housework. Preliminary results indicate that access to PFL encourages men, especially fathers, to spend more time performing care work and household work. On the other hand, women with access to PFL tend to increase their time spent on market work by reducing time spent on care work and household work.

Time Budgets and social accounting matrices

Author: Jonathan Gershuny

Work is exchanged through the division of labour, implying social interdependency and organic solidarity among social groups.  This paper estimates flows of paid work time between social groups, classified by occupations and human capital levels, in the context of those groups’ overall time budgets (including unpaid work and consumption time).  It provides exhaustive, nationally representative versions of time-based Social Accounting Matrices, for the UK in 1985. 2000 and 2015

How To Present With Power And Pizzazz

Author: Mark Mark Ellwood

(Note: My abstract entitled “The Portability of Work Among Executive Women” has already been accepted for the 41st IATUR conference.)

I am proposing a second presentation for the plenary session or for a breakout session entitled “How To Present With Power and Pizzazz.”

As a professional speaker, I have attended a number of IATUR conferences and observed the opportunity for excellent researchers to improve their presentation skills. So, in keeping with the theme of this year’s conference, I propose an entertaining, insightful, and educational plenary (or breakout) session that provides tips on presentation skills for researchers.

As background, I was the national champion in an effective speaking competition, and then was a world runner-up. I have trained other international speaking champions, and corporate clients. Of note to IATUR, I taught effective presentation skills to Masters and PhD students from dozens of countries on 43 occasions. These students wrestled with presenting complex research results.  

My  20-minute IATIUR presentation will include:

·        How to intrigue an audience with a research question

·        Simplifying visuals to highlight data

·        Using  gestures to emphasize a point

·        Incorporating stories to make research come alive

·        Answering difficult questions succinctly

·        Summing up a presentation with a call to action

I plan to include a couple of humorous anecdotes, and a new custom poem, written for IATUR. It would be based on my recently published book pf productivity rhymes entitled “The Poetic Path To Getting More Done.”

This will be a different kind of presentation for an IATUR conference. Based on my experience at IATUR conferences and my professional skills, I am confident this will provide a unique experience for attendees – both entertaining and educational.

Summray of the 2016 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities on Japan

Author: Mie Shimizu

The Statistics Bureau of Japan released the results of the 2016 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities of Japan (STULA) in September 2017. In this paper, it is introduced the part of summary resultsof daily time allocation.

 

2016 STULA was conducted by Statistics Bureau as of October 2016. STULA, which has been conducted every five years since 1976, and the 2016 STULA was the ninth.

 

In this survey, about 88,000 households are selected and about 200,000 household members ten years old and over report their activities by every 15 minute during consecutive two days which are designated by Statistics Bureau, and survey items such as “activity of caring”, “acceptance of child care services”, “wish for work”, etc.

 

Survey method is Enumerators deliver and collect the questionnaires to/from each household or household members answer by the Internet.

 

Household characteristics, labour force status and other characteristics, that are  basic characteristics in terms of socio-economics and demographics, are collected in addition to time use information. These characteristics are frequently used by complementary variables for time use analysis.

 

Moreover, survey item “usual working hours per week”, “desirable working hours per week”, for household members, is surveyed in the 2016 STULA. We can analyze  the relationship between child-care, family-care and labour force status (such as  influence of working time, whether workers are satisfied or not, and so on).

 

Therefore, we are sure that the survey item must be useful for the future and be significant variable for one of the complementary variables in time use analysis. In this paper,it is introduced the part of summary results involving this year’s theme “commuting time use”.

Work or leisure: do time use patterns impact wellbeing among women living with a breast cancer diagnosis?

Author: NI GAO
Contributing author(s): Mandy Ryan, Mark Harris, Nicolas Krucien, Richard Norman, Suzanne Robinson

Background: Evidence on the relationship between time use and wellbeing mainly focuses on a single daily activity (for example, paid work). However, investigating one activity in isolation ignores potential substitute or compensatory effects of the other available activities. Moreover, the combined effect of time use patterns on wellbeing among individuals living with a cancer is unknown. As wellbeing is likely to become a priority post a cancer diagnosis, understanding the role of time use patterns on wellbeing is extremely important.

Methods: Using data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH), we focused on 249 women (963 observations) who had been living with a breast cancer diagnosis and were in the labour force from 2001 to 2016. Wellbeing was taken to be health-related quality of life (SF6D) and self-reported life satisfaction. Four time use patterns were considered: 1) ‘part time paid work with standard physical leisure (PS)’; 2) ‘part time paid work with less than standard physical leisure (PLS)’; 3) ‘full time paid work with standard physical leisure (FS)’; and 4) ‘full time paid work with less than standard physical leisure(FLS)’. We applied system generalized method of moments (GMM) dynamic panel data models to estimate the impact of time use patterns on wellbeing. To capture heterogeneity across the population, we explored the differing effects of time use patterns by years of living with a breast cancer diagnosis and occupation.

Results: Both PS and FLS have a positive effect on SF6D; but (surprisingly) none of the time use patterns considered has a significant effect on life satisfaction. When split by diagnosis durations, both PS and FLS have significant effects on SF6D among women living with a breast cancer diagnosis for between 10 to 15 years. FLS has a weak effect among the same cohort on life satisfaction. No other significant effects were found, and no significant effects were also found by occupation type.

Conclusion: Results indicate that the combined effect of time use is more informative than a single effect. To maximize wellbeing, (post-diagnosis) women need to choose an optimal bundle between paid work and physical leisure: standard physical leisure has a positive effect on SF6D but only when bundled with part time work; full time paid work has a positive effect but similarly only when bundled with less than standard physical leisure.

2019 Korean Time Use Survery

Author: YOUNGRAN KIM

The 5th Time Use Survey in 2019 to collect information on how Koreans spend their time is conducted by Statistics Korea.

The questions related to well-being and ICT device was added in this survey.

Activity Classification is also revised in accordance with UN ICATUS for the purpose of improving the comparability.

Utilization of time use data for external exposure assessment for reconstruction of life and forestry in Fukushima

Author: Yoko Shimada
Contributing author(s): Minoru Yoneda, Department of Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan

Eight years have passed since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants accident. Although almost all evacuation orders have already lifted except in difficult-to-return zones, residents’ return rate are about 15 % as of April in 2018. This shows that many residents concern about the health risks caused by radiation exposure when they go back to life before the accident. There are two reasons for residents’ anxiety. The first is that only official radiation-dose criteria is “1mSv/year” now even though anxiety levels for evacuee vary by age and occupation. The second is that radiation levels in forests are still high because decontamination in forests have carried out just near residential areas. Forestry and forest tourism have been major industries in local areas of Fukushima before the accident. In order to revive them, it is important for local governments to assess health risks of the people who work in forests under several decontamination plans.

 

Based on this situation, we designed and carried out a time diary survey in a village of Fukushima to grasp the allocation of time use for each daily activity of individual groups classified by gender, age and occupation. This survey data makes it possible to develop a model for evaluating the external exposure levels of wide variety of residents. Evaluated values will help to allay residents’ anxiety for radiation exposure and to suggest a policy of future decontamination in forests and forestry.

 In this conference, we introduce the outline and utilization method of our time diary survey specific to the external exposure assessment for reconstruction of life and forestry in Fukushima.

Working schedules, fathers’ time with children and life satisfaction: a Sequence Analysis approach

Author: Maria Letizia Tanturri
Contributing author(s): Maria Letizia Tanturri

Theoretical backgroundThe recent increase in the female labor force participation has given origins to a process of gender roles redefinition both in the household and in parenting tasks management. Such changes require fathers to find new schemes for the allocation of time among paid work, leisure and fathering tasks.Hypothesis and aimOur main hypothesis is that fathers tend to schedule their time with children by following a ‘crowd effect’ (by performing parenting activities in a quite homogeneous way). We expect father's behavior to be influenced by the workplace rules, but also by some cultural elements, like the social expectations on men as fathers.We want to understand which elements influence the way fathers allocate their time, who are the fathers who take care of children in ‘less common ways’, and if fathers’ engagement depends on their time availability.Data and methodsWe focus on Italy, a country where the male breadwinner model is still well rooted, and the relation with job is still a pivotal trait shaping men’s identity.We use data from the 2008 Italian Time Use Survey, and adopt Sequence Analysis techniques to identify some “fathering profiles” and to differentiate between ‘mainstream’ and ‘uncommon’ childrearing scheduling. Multinomial logit models are used to understand which factors influence the risk to be included in the groups identified. Moreover, clusters are studied as determinant of fathers’ subjective life satisfaction.ResultsMeal time is the main moment in which fathers are available for children. Five ‘fathering profiles’ are identified, strongly shaped by the father’s workplace organization, but also by some cultural elements, determining different levels of fathers’ engagement in each group.

Couples' time use before and after the kids: A fractional panel fixed effects approach

Author: Duy Tung
Contributing author(s): Dr. Kevin Staub

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive panel study for the impact of having children on coupled families' market and non-market time uses. We contribute to labour supply and time use literature by investigating the simultaneous effect of children onto both parents' time shares of: paid work, childcare, housework and leisure. A key contribution of our approach is to document how parenthood alters the coordinative time allocation within the multi-member household in a panel setting, hence, accounting for both endogenous biasedness and individual effects. Utilising a fixed effects multi-variate logistic model, we developed new estimators which suit the purpose of this study, at the same time, having direct interpretations as labour supply elasticity parameters. The proposed estimator bases on a quasi-differencing technique and is the first in its class to: i) be applied to any logit-based conditional mean response variable and ii) handle fixed effects flexibly, without dropping any observations. It hence can be used for purely fractional data, discrete binary, multinomial data, or for a mix of fractional and discrete data. The versatility of this estimator and its good small sample performance are further demonstrated in a Monte Carlo study, hence, making it possible to deal with central features of the data such as person-activity specific fixed effects and multinomial fractional data with substantial observations at the boundary values in a simple and intuitive way.

A study of city residents' suburban activity on weekend inferred from mobile phone data: A case study of Shanghai

Author: Yangfan Zhang

Shanghai, as one of the largest city in China, has a population of 24.18 million by 2017, of which more than 10 million live in the central area of the city. Based on the mobile phone data, this study tries to figure out where do the city residents go, from central Shanghai to the outside area, on weekend and realize residents’ travel behavior and activity pattern. Within the administrative boundaries of Shanghai and outside the outer ring expressway, there are four types of places where the residents live in central Shanghai usually go on weekend. First, new towns; Second, the other built-up areas except the new towns; Then, tourists attractions; And lastly, rural areas. For the residents who live in central Shanghai and travel to the rural areas, the study classifies those country visitors according to the length of their stay and proposes several indicators to reflect the attractiveness and popularity of each village. Next, analyzing the relationship between people’s travel distance and overnight-visitor percent. At last, in terms of rural tourism, this study does a classification for the village in rural areas based on the characteristics of those indicators and puts forward some policy suggestions for the rural revitalization strategy of city government. 

Displacement or disinterest? Exploring the relationship between children’s engagement in sport and screen time

Author: Killian Mullan

This paper examines the relationship between children's engagement in sport and their time in screen-based activities. There is widespread concern that children spending excessive amounts of time in screen-based activities (including time using mobile devices such as smartphones) comes at the expense of time in physical activities, with adverse implications for their health and well-being.  Prior research finds a negative association between physical and sedentary activities, but this is small and findings are somewhat inconsistent. This paper adds to research in this area by presenting a novel analysis of the relationship between children's engagement in sporting activities and their screen-time in the UK. Using data on the number of times children engage in a sporting activity during a period of one month (from the UK Time Use Surveys 2000-01 and 2014-15), capturing variation in the embeddedness of  sport in their routine schedules, the paper explores the relationship between monthly engagement in sport and time use on a randomly selected day. The results show a positive association between the number of times boys engage in sports during the month and their time in sport on the diary day, but not for girls. With respect to other activities, boys who are relatively more engaged in sport during the month average less screen time on the diary day, with no significant association for time in other non-screen leisure activities. Again, there was no significant association for girls in any activity. Further analysis reveals that there is no association between engagement in sport and time using devices such as smartphones. The negative association between sport and screen time (for boys) is therefore concentrated during time when screen-based activities are their main activity, suggesting that there are important differences between different types of screen time. The paper questions the usefulness of the idea of displacement to understand the relationship between activities, and argues for the analytic value of bringing together different measures time use across varying time horizons.

Changes in Time Use and Their Effect on Energy Consumption in the United States

Author: Ashok Sekar
Contributing author(s): Eric Williams and Roger Chen

Lifestyles are changing due to information technology and other socio-techno- logical trends. We study the energy effects induced by lifestyle shifts via trade- offs in time spent in performing activities. We use the American Time Use Survey to find changes in times performing different activities from 2003 to 2012. The results show that Americans are spending considerably more time at home (7.8 days more in 2012 compared with 2003). This increased home time is coun- terbalanced by decreased time spent traveling (1.2 days less in 2012 versus 2003) and in non-residential buildings (6.7 days less in 2012 versus 2003). Increased residential time is mainly due to increased work at home, video watch- ing, and computer use. Decomposition analysis is then used to estimate effects on energy consumption, indicating that more time at home and less on travel and in non-residential buildings reduced national energy demand by 1,700 trillion BTU in 2012, 1.8% of the national total.

Developing time use metrics to inform workforce development programs

Author: Ashok Sekar
Contributing author(s): Dilge Kanoglu, Gordon Abner, Erik Funkhouser, Varun Rai

 

A substantial number of workforce development programs focus on helping economically disadvantaged individuals develop the skills and credentials necessary to have better employment opportunities. Previous studies have shown that those who are economically disadvantaged are also time poor, meaning that they have less time available for discretionary activities such as but not limited to education, professional and personal care services. In other words, for these individuals incorporating workforce development programs into their schedule may be challenging since the timing of the workforce development program may conflict with that of other essential activities, causing a significant time burden to the participant. Therefore studying time-use patterns of the economically disadvantaged population can not only help in understanding the time-burden but also assist in program design. However, to our knowledge, no research systematically examines participant time-use burden associated with participating in workforce development programs and the importance of such data for program design.  

 

To address this need, we conduct a phone survey of eligible participants and non-participants of workforce development programs in Central Texas. The phone survey follows the standard time-use survey approach, essentially mapping activities that respondents perform over 24 hours, along with additional information such as where and with whom the activity was performed. In addition to the standard time-use survey measures, we also elicit information about the curtailability and flexibility of each activity, barriers to activity shifting and curtailment, and the subject’s perception of control over their time. By overlaying the time requirements of workforce development programs over participant and non-participant time use profiles and measuring individuals’ availability, curtailability, flexibility, and the limitations to flexibility, we expect to provide crucial insights about the program’s target population as well as provide a framework for analysis to ensure effective program design. We believe that our time-use measures will help to reduce program attrition, improve program resource efficiency, and improve participant outcomes.

Differential impacts of demand-side response measures: Determining the differences in on-peak and off-peak household activities across sociodemographic groups

Author: Ashok Sekar
Contributing author(s): Lee White, Varun Rai

 

Household demand-side response (DSR) measures are gaining a lot of traction in the U.S. Current DSR measures rely on opt-out, default rate structures to penalizes electricity use during peak hours thereby incentivizing households to shift their electricity use away from peak hours. However, not all households are equally flexible in their ability to shift electricity usage since the timing of certain household activities may be considered essential for a minimum standard of living. These lifestyle differences may lead to disadvantaged communities facing additional economic burdens due to DSR measures, yet prior literature has not investigated the extent to which different sociodemographic groups in the U.S. may face greater burdens when assigned to DSR rates. The first step in understanding the burdens is to establish a baseline of lifestyle choices that different sociodemographic groups will face, in the event that a DSR measure were rolled out as a default. We use American Time Use survey (ATUS) to conduct our study. ATUS provides detailed information of activities performed by Americans over a 24h time period along with their sociodemographic characteristics. ATUS is a multi-year dataset with over 11,000 individuals participating each year. Using ATUS we measure differences in household activity patterns of various sociodemographic groups during expected on- and off-peak hours. Differences measured include: 1) percentage of on- and off-peak hours spent at home, and 2) type of activities and their characteristics during on- and off-peak hours, such as total time spent in an activity, with whom the activity was performed, and co-occurrence of activities. Statistical differences (or lack thereof) in activity patterns across various sociodemographic groups provides preliminary evidence of the choices individuals and households face when DSR is implemented. Using these differences we describe the potential impact of DSR across sub-groups.

Time use difference of young children using R programming according to mothers' childrearing behaviors, the employment and children's sex

Author: Nam Hee Do
Contributing author(s): Mi Ra Cho

The present study aims to understand basic daily routines and environmental factors that affect infants and young children's development by investigating their time diary in order to provide basic information necessary for infant and early childhood care, education and parent education.

 

Time Diaries were collected from records of how the children spent their weekdays and weekends, then the differences in the overall hours daily routines and the hours spent on each behavioral domains were calculated and described using R programming. Activity hours by age were analyzed to understand the characteristics of activities of children at each age. Lastly, children's working hours were analyzed by the mother's child rearing behaviors, employment status, and children’s sex.

To carry out this study, foreign and national literature were reviewed along with conducting surveys and consulting meetings with field experts. The subjects were five hundred infants and young children (boys 51.2%, girls 48.8%) aged between 1 and 4 (Age 1 25.6%, age 2 26.6%, age 3 23.6%, and age 4 24.2%) residing in Seoul, Gyeonggi and Incheon regions. The mothers or the main characteristics were surveyed to collect information on the children.

 

The results are as follows. 1) Children’s time use and participation rate of non-working mother’s in personal maintenance, learning, social interaction and leisure activities are high in week-days. On weekends, children’s time use and participation rate in regardless of mother’s employment are very similar or little more of non-working mothers. 2) Overall time use in personal maintenance, learning, social interaction and leisure activities are different depends on mother’s child rearing behaviors. 3) The time use and participation rate of personal maintenance, learning, social interaction and leisure activities is very similar both week-days and weekends. The policy recommendation suggested based on these results.

 

The development of time use in different socioeconomic groups in Finland

Author: Timo Toivonen

 

Research on the way of life and consumption of different social strata and classes was used as a theoretical background. Traditionally, the starting point has been that the social class of a person more or less determines the consumption of that person and the class differences are remarkable. However, in the long run the class differences tend to become narrower, because lower classes adopt consumption habits of upper classes. This has been explained, for instance, by “trickle down” -effect. However, new differences can appear and distinctions between classes persist but in new ways. The changes in time use can be considered in the same way. The data was compiled by Statistics Finland, the time use of 10-64-year-old population for the years 1979, 1987, 1999, and 2009 was covered. Four socioeconomic groups (other entrepreneurs and self-employed than farmers, upper middle class, lower middle class and workers) were included in the study as well as five control variables (time used on paid work, gender, age, education, and number of children) as independent variables and 25 time use activities. A general trend was that the differences between socioeconomic groups were converging but for different reasons in different activities. For instance, in most of the categories of domestic work, as food preparation, baking, and dish washing and laundry differences vanished because the time use of workers decreased to the level of upper middle class. On the other side, for instance, time devoted by upper middle class to reading and high culture decreased remarkably and difference between upper middle class and workers converged but still at the end of the century they were statistically significant. There was one important exception from the general trend: time devoted to paid work by workers diminished so strongly that differences between workers and other entrepreneurs and upper middle class and became statistically highly significant in 2010. However, this cannot be explained by trickle down -effect.

 

Out-migration, remittances, and the time use of left-behind household members

Author: Hannah Randolph

Title: Out-migration, remittances, and the time use of left-behind household members

Type of presentation: Oral

Presenting author: Hannah Randolph

Other authors: n/a

Themes: Empirical analyses of time-use data, using time-use data to inform and evaluate social policy, well-being and time-use

Growing global flows of migration, both international and internal, necessitate a deeper understanding of how such migration affects sending households in developing countries. Gendered migration flows result in heavily gendered effects at the household level. In particular, left-behind adult women may be expected to make up for income lost to out-migration by entering or increasing participation in the labor market, while still maintaining a household through unpaid work. Previous literature concluded that out-migration resulted in a reduction in women's labor force participation and hours and an increase in time spent on household production, but did not separate the effects of out-migration (accompanied by loss of access to the migrant's time and income) and the remittances sent back by the migrant. 

This paper employs a seemingly-unrelated regression model and the time use module of the 2010 wave of the China Family Panel Survey to estimate the effects of migration and remittances on left-behind household members' time allocation. I account for the endogeneity of migration and remittance decisions through the use of an instrument, and also use Tobit specifications to correct for left-censored dependent variables (individuals' time use). My findings accord with previous literature documenting a negative net effect on formal labor supply and a positive net effect on household production and leisure for prime-age women, but I find diverse effects for elderly and children. I also demonstrate that these effects are largely driven by the volume of remittances received by sending households, and are influenced by the gender of the migrant. These findings suggest that shocks to remittances may have far-reaching effects in sending communities, including labor market considerations and increased demands on left-behind members' time, and that migration impacts the well-being of left-behind household members through their time use as well as through other channels. The results also suggest that a simple two-person household model is not an accurate representation of household dynamics in this context, and highlight the need for a multi-person household bargaining framework to answer questions about household dynamics in developing countries. 

How does ICTs change seniors’ media time? : A longitudinal study of seniors media use with an adoption of smartphone in South Korea

Author: Hyejoong Kim
Contributing author(s): Hanjin Bae, Meejung Chin

 

The purpose of this research is to investigate what influences seniors’ media use and how modern technology such as information communication technologies (ICTs) change senior’s media time. The fastest growing population to use smartphone in recent years had been seniors aged over 60 years old. This research, therefore, aimed to analyze the differences of seniors’ media use from 2011 and 2018 and what influences seniors’ media time.

 

The data used in this research is Korea Media Panel in 2011 and 2018 published by Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI). There were 955 people whose age rage is between 60 and 69 in 2011; 803 people whose age range is between 60 and 69 in 2018. T-test was conducted in order to compare media time in 2011 and 2018 and regression was used in order to analyze the influence of socio-economic status (SES), household type and the year variable to media time of seniors.

 

The findings from this research suggest that compared to 2011, time used to read newspaper/book/magazine and use mobile phone/landline phone have significantly declined while smartphone time as well as the use of online chatting/instant messenger, information search and professional document program have increased in 2018. Second, seniors who are older, have higher education level, unemployed, and have higher income spent more time on newspaper/book/magazine compared to those who are not while smartphone is used more often by those who are younger and who have higher education level. Overall, seniors with high SES spent more time for both old media such as newspaper/books/magazine and new media such as smartphone. In contrast, higher age was positively related with the use of newspaper/book/magazine while negatively influenced the use of ICTs.  

 

In conclusion, the use of ICTs is closely related to information gathering and restricted access to ICTs may widen the gap of seniors to get information. This research assured that rather than family member/household type, seniors’ use of ICTs is heavily influenced by SES and age. Therefore, this research suggests that public support for seniors to use ICTs must be provided in order to reduce disparity of digital divide including technology use and access to information among the seniors.

Daily life of Hungarian Mothers on Child-care support: then and now

Author: Alexandra Urban
Contributing author(s): Prof. Ki-soo Eun

This study aims to compare the daily life of Hungarian mums with young children. Hungary has a long history of childcare support system typically granted in the first three years of the child. The universal GYES was put into effect as early as 1967, and GYED that was conditioned on previous wages in 1985. As a result, Hungarian society looks at full-time motherhood at the early ages of the child as a viable, and desirable – if temporary - option. Only a fragment, approximately 10 percent of mothers with children between the ages of 0 to 3 participates in the labor force, this being one of the lowest in the European Union.

Apart from the social prestige of having the option of full-time motherhood as opposed to being a dependent housewife, the actual financial amount of this support is relatively small. In most cases it cannot be a financially desirable alternative to going back to work. So what is the reason that the majority of mothers still choose to fully utilize the three years of this system?

By analyzing the Hungarian Time Use Survey of 1986-87, and the most recent data of 2009-2010, this study aims to find answers to the following questions: Are mothers receiving childcare support significantly less strained then working mums with children of the same age? Do they do significantly more unpaid work and childcare then their working counterparts? Do they enjoy more quality leisure, and sleep more? What kind of daily schedule to they have? To sum it up, do they have a better quality of life explaining this financially unprofitable choice, or the benefit they derive from this system more about spending more time with their children? Finally, are there any significant changes in the time use of these mothers in 1986 before the system change, and more than twenty years later?

Work and Life of Japanese young Couples in Local City

Author: Masago Fujiwara

 

With the increase of dual-income families, young husbands are expected to participate more in child care and housework for lessening the burdens of wives. For this, Japanese family sociologists have been trying to find the determinants of Japanese husbands’ involvement in child care and housework, employing the models developed by American sociological society, They conducted multivariate analyses on data obtained by questionnaire surveys, not on time use data. Through these studies, they found that husband’s shorter work hours is the strongest determinant for their involvement in child care.

 

In my study, I tried to confirm whether this finding is valid, but also if husbands’ involvement in child care and housework is contributing to mothers’ less involvement in it, as is expected without question. We could also obtain other interesting data through which we could make clear the life logs(stages) of 3000 mothers from their birth, through graduation, work, and marriage to child birth.   .

 

For this, I conducted 5000 size of complete questionnaire survey, ’Work and Life of Mothers of Small Children of Shimane Prefecture’ and collected around 3000 questionnaires from mothers. The questionnaires were distributed from March 5 to 31, 2018, in two small cities with a population of 50,000 or more of Shimane prefecture.

 

IPUMS Time Use: Online data dissemination system

Author: Daniel Backman
Contributing author(s): Sandra L. Hofferth, Sarah M. Flood, Liana Sayer, Jonathan Gershuny

IPUMS Time Use simplifies access to complex time diary data through powerful web-based dissemination systems that make customized, easy-to-use datasets. Our systems allow users to create measures of time use using combinations of activities, time of day, co-presence of others, and secondary activity for inclusion in a user-defined dataset or to download episode-level data files that they can analyze directly. We currently deliver data from the American Time Use Survey (2003-2017) as well as data from the American Heritage Time Use Study (1965+) and the Multinational Time Use Study (45 samples from 13 countries) at no cost to the data user.

This poster will describe the data available via IPUMS Time Use, illustrate key features of the data extract systems and describe new system features. One new system feature to be highlighted on this poster is the ability to create rectangularized data extracts that automatically append person- and household-level records onto activity records. This functionality will save users the effort of sorting and merging data that exists when working with a hierarchical data structure.

IPUMS staff will be available to answer questions about data availability and data access. IPUMS Time Use is a collaboration between the Minnesota Population Center, the Maryland Population Research Centre and the Centre for Time Use Research (CTUR) at the University College London.

Daily life and life schedule of Hungarian mothers on child-care support: then and now

Author: Ki-Soo Eun
Contributing author(s): Ki-Soo Eun (Seoul National University)

This study aims to compare the daily life of Hungarian mums with young children. Hungary has a long history of childcare support system typically granted in the first three years of the child. The universal GYES was put into effect as early as 1967, and GYED that was conditioned on previous wages in 1985. As a result, Hungarian society looks at full-time motherhood at the early ages of the child as a viable, and desirable – if temporary - option. Only a fragment, approximately 10 percent of mothers with children between the ages of 0 to 3 participates in the labor force, this being one of the lowest in the European Union.

Apart from the social prestige of having the option of full-time motherhood as opposed to being a dependent housewife, the actual financial amount of this support is relatively small. In most cases it cannot be a financially desirable alternative to going back to work. So what is the reason that the majority of mothers still choose to fully utilize the three years of this system?

By analyzing the Hungarian Time Use Survey of 1986-87, and the most recent data of 2009-2010, this study aims to find answers to the following questions: Are mothers receiving childcare support significantly less strained then working mums with children of the same age? Do they do significantly more unpaid work and childcare then their working counterparts? Do they enjoy more quality leisure, and sleep more? What kind of daily schedule to they have? To sum it up, do they have a better quality of life explaining this financially unprofitable choice, or the benefit they derive from this system more about spending more time with their children? Finally, are there any significant changes in the time use of these mothers in 1986 before the system change, and more than twenty years later?

Comparing a smartphone diary app to 24 hour recall survey to measure time use of adolescents in Guatemala and Brazil

Author: Celeste Marin
Contributing author(s): Rosa Noemi Guit Antonio, Vanessa Lima Caldeira Franceschini, Veronica de Castro Lameira

Most of our knowledge about adolescent time use comes from high income countries but is unlikely to be generalizable to low- and middle-income countries, where many children leave school early and may have irregular or informal jobs. Recall bias in interviews is more likely when days are less structured and clock time is less culturally important. Pen and paper diaries are burdensome and assume a relatively high level of literacy, which children and non-native speakers of the national language in particular may lack. Most young people are comfortable typing text messages on phones despite limited literacy skills. Thus a self-administered mobile phone diary may be more acceptable than other diary methods, leading to higher rates of compliance. I compared a simple self-administered smartphone diary app to interviewer-administered 24-hour recall survey among adolescents aged 12-17 in rural Guatemala (1 day) and urban Brazil (1 weekday, 1 Saturday). Surveys were much more complete than diaries: 31 of 43 Guatemalan and 25 of 38 Brazilian participants submitted a diary. Most diaries had gaps (time with no activity) and improbable overlapping activities.  I report the average gaps and overlaps in minutes per day. I also compare the averagetime spent by type of activity (leisure, school, work), mean length of episode, and number of episodes per day. Participants reported enjoying the diary, but most completed it at the end of the day, not in real time. I conclude that in my settings, diary data was less complete and did not likely reduce recall error. 

Impacts and Effects of Improved Wood Burning Stoves on Quality and Use of Time: An Experimental Study in Rural Kenya

Author: Kirstie Kirstie Jagoe
Contributing author(s): Madeleine Rossanese, Dana Charron, Jonathan Rouse, Francis Waweru, MaryAnne Waruguru, Kavanaugh Livingston, Julie Ipe

Globally women work significantly longer hours than men. It is estimated that women in Sub-Saharan Africa spend three times longer as men on unpaid work, such as household chores and caregiving. ‘Time poverty’ restricts women’s involvement in paid work, as well as educational, political, social, leisure and well-being activities, thereby perpetuating gender inequality, economic poverty, and a persistent drudgery trap. A significant time burden for women living in communities dependent on biomass fuel and traditional cookstoves arises from the procurement and preparation of fuel as well as from long hours cooking on inefficient polluting stoves. We used a mixed methods study in 55 households in rural Kenya to explore the impact of introducing a more efficient biomass cooking technology on time use and quality. Quantitative survey, stove use monitors (SUMs), and qualitative research methods were used for four weeks before and 14 weeks after households were given either one or two new wood burning stoves.

 

Key findings:

Women reported spending just over an hour less per day cooking at the endline survey compared to baseline; just under 6 hours at baseline (SD2.5) vs just over 4.5 hours (SD2). 

 

According to the SUMs, an average of 40% of all cooking was carried out on the Kuniokoa.

 

Time spent collecting fuel dropped from an average of 12 hours (SD 10) per week at baseline to 7 hours (SD 5) per week 4 weeks after receiving the Kuniokoa, to 5 hours (SD 4) per week 10 weeks later.

 

Participants reported a partial shift in cooking to teenage children and husbands.

 

When their time and effort spent on cooking and related tasks was reduced, a majority of the participants used the freed-up energy for economically productive tasks.

 

It is not necessary to achieve near complete displacement of the baseline technology to see impacts on time quantity and quality. 

 

Incorporating motivation into time use studies: an example with Brazilian children

Author: Celeste Marin
Contributing author(s): Veronica de Castro Lameira, Vanessa Lima Caldeira Franceschini

Time use researchers typically apply their own judgements to determining the meaning of activities: cooking is housework, exercise is leisure, bathing is a necessity. But what of the people who cook or take a bath to relax, or exercise under duress?  We conducted 24-hour recall surveys with 240 children aged 10-17 in urban Belo Horizonte, Brazil (one weekday and one Saturday each). For each activity, we asked participants to say why they did it (enjoyment, to get something else, peer pressure/social expectations, responsibility, nothing better to do, needed money, physiological necessity, other) and rate their subjective wellbeing (SWB) on a five-point scale (using a card with 5 faces). We are conducting a cluster analysis of lexical activity, stated motivation (or “meaning”) and SWB rating. We hypothesize that many activities will have different meanings for participants,  a finding that would suggest that time use researchers need to review their approaches to categorizing activities, particularlyin cross-cultural settings and among demographics that the researcher is less familiar with. We also expect that activities that are more self-motivated will be associated with higher SWB scores, and that boys spend more of their time on activities that are self-motivated than girls, in line with research on gender differences in time use among adults. 

Games for the Young, Television for the Old: Evolving Screen Time in the American Time Use Survey

Author: Gray Kimbrough

Researchers have suggested that changes in Americans' screen time could explain a wide variety of cultural and economic phenomena, from young men's labor supply to the sexual behavior of adults in traditional childbearing ages. Noting increases in sedentary screen time using limited health data, other researchers have postulated widespread increases in screen time for all adults. I examine information on primary screen time in American Time Use Survey data to establish basic facts about levels of and changes in time spent watching television, movies and streaming video, playing games, and using computers for leisure over the period 2003 to 2017.  At all ages, men spend more time watching television than women of the same age. Young adult men increased average gaming time over this period, largely offset by decreases in television time. Americans over age 45 increased average time spent watching television, movies and streaming video over this time period from initial levels that already significantly exceeded those of younger adults and teenagers.  The large amounts of television time among older Americans, and accompanying increases over the past decade and a half, may warrant significantly more attention than relatively small amounts of average screen time among younger adults and teenagers.

Measuring the overall consequences of caregiving: a multidimensional approach

Author: Ki-Soo Eun
Contributing author(s): Jiweon Jun, Ito Peng

A number of instruments have been developed to measure the burden of caregiving among informal carers. Although these measures provide valuable information on various dimensions of caregiver burden, they are not sufficient to assess the overall level of strain experienced by caregivers, because a simple non-weighted sum of answers may not be a proper representation of the overall burden.

Adapting the Alkire-Foster method developed to measure multidimensional poverty, we propose a threshold-based approach that takes the multidimensionality of the caregiving experience into account. It is based on the assumption that as in case of poverty, the negative consequences of experiencing multiple strains attached to caregiving would be greater than the sum of their individual effects.

We first identify the dimensions and indicators that are known to be important consequences of caregiving such as emotional, physical, economic and relational strain; restrictions on time and freedom; deteriorating health; value of caregiving. We then count overlapping strains the caregiver experiences in different indicators of caregiver burden and identify caregivers who are experiencing strains in multiple dimensions above a cut-off point as multidimensionally strained.

We test this measure using the newly collected survey on eldercare and childcare in Korea (2018).  By providing an overall measurement that identifies caregivers with multiple burden, we expect to be able to find out which group of caregivers are more likely to be at risk, and in which dimensions that most caregivers suffer strain.

This research is a part of CWE-GAM Project which Maria Floro and Elizabeth King lead as co-principal investigators.

Regulation and Accounting: Methodology of History and Economics

Author: h hsieh
Contributing author(s): hsihchia.hsieh

Abstract:The target is to find a sustainable regulation which is dynamic equilibrium for  

coexisting systems. The test detects the policy with an maximum-efficient boundary,  minimiz-

ing the cost and losses of inequality  through   sustainable minimum variations over

time. Method: Non-deterministic  polynomials(NP=P) predicts  the non-trivial dynamic equili-

brium as the unique, unbiased, consistent solution of heterogeneous perturbations. Findings:

Nontrivial dynamic equilibrium  is  an overlapping boundary, transforming and reversing vio-

lations into reversible sustainable cycles of democracy elections. Shifting equilibrium is local

and global focus points, repairing the gaps of systems. The data of Taiwan are tested for

selection and reclassification, reducing losses in toxic trade and sustainable parity of exchange

rate between the U.S dollar and British Pound.

2000 AMS Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary: 62G05;

Secondary:62G30; 39B82, 49K40, 35B37.

JEL. A11 B11, C11,D11

Keywords and Phrases:Convergence General dynamic equilibrium in

continuous space and time; non-deterministic polynomial(NPP) problems on conflicting theories.

 

Regulation and Accounting: Methodology of History and Economics

Author: h hsieh
Contributing author(s): PeiGin.Hsieh.

Abstract:The target is to find a sustainable regulation which is dynamic equilibrium for  

coexisting systems. The test detects the policy with an maximum-efficient boundary,  minimiz-

ing the cost and losses of inequality  through   sustainable minimum variations over

time. Method: Non-deterministic  polynomials(NP=P) predicts  the non-trivial dynamic equili-

brium as the unique, unbiased, consistent solution of heterogeneous perturbations. Findings:

Nontrivial dynamic equilibrium  is  an overlapping boundary, transforming and reversing vio-

lations into reversible sustainable cycles of democracy elections. Shifting equilibrium is local

and global focus points, repairing the gaps of systems. The data of Taiwan are tested for

selection and reclassification, reducing losses in toxic trade and sustainable parity of exchange

rate between the U.S dollar and British Pound.

2000 AMS Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary: 62G05;

Secondary:62G30; 39B82, 49K40, 35B37.

JEL. A11 B11, C11,D11

Keywords and Phrases:Convergence General dynamic equilibrium in

continuous space and time; non-deterministic polynomial(NPP) problems on conflicting theories.