44th International Association for Time Use Research Conference

Socioeconomic-Sleep Disparities and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey

Author: Katherine Engel

Sleep is a critical determinant of health and productivity, and thus sleep disparities likely contribute to inequalities in wellbeing. The COVID-19 pandemic may have affected sleep positively by allowing for more time at home or negatively by creating more stress and care giving responsibilities. This study evaluated associations between sleep and the pandemic and examined whether pandemic-sleep changes varied by socioeconomic status (SES). Using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), it examined several measures of sleep duration and quality, including total daily time spent sleeping and being sleepless, likelihood of having any sleeplessness and optimal sleep duration, and number of daily sleeplessness episodes, among a US nationally representative sample of adults aged 15 and older (N=129,220). Heterogeneity analyses were conducted to determine if pandemic sleep changes varied by SES, as measured by household income. Results show that during the pandemic, average time spent sleeping increased by nearly 24 minutes/day (4.60%), average time spent being sleepless increased by almost 2 minutes/day (49.97%), likelihood of having any sleeplessness increased by 4.00 percentage points (76.36%), likelihood of having optimal sleep duration increased by 3.00 percentage point (4.63%), and average number of sleeplessness episodes/day increased by 0.04 (71.15%). A 100% increase in Federal Poverty Level (FPL) percent was associated with a 3.00 percentage point (4.53%) increase in likelihood of optimal sleep duration during the pandemic. However, pre-pandemic SES sleep disparities were not observed during the pandemic. Sleep may serve as a mechanism through which the pandemic has differentially affected wellbeing.

Time for Change: The Cultural Schemas and Temporal (Un)Knowns of Fatherhood

Author: Boroka Bo

By employing a multimethod approach and studying the experiences of first-time fathers, this article examines the link between socioeconomic status (SES) and family change. Drawing on insights from the sociology of time and from the Theory of Conjunctural Action (TCA), I show how the social structure of the family can be reconfirmed or reconfigured during this formative life course conjuncture. I find that both SES and the social experience of time are salient when it comes to the cultural schemas fathers rely on to navigate this transition period. The social structure of the family is reconfirmed when new fathers deploy the deep cultural schema of ‘Keeping Time’, as this main schema is coupled with the shallow schemas of ‘Policing Temporal Boundaries’, ‘Learned Helplessness’, and ‘Temporal Path Dependency’. On the other hand, social structures are reconfigured when new fathers rely on the cultural schema of ‘Making Time’, accompanied by the shallow cultural schemas of ‘Best-Laid Plans’, ‘Echoes of the Past’, and ‘Temporal Path Destabilization’. My work suggests that policies and organizations targeting the well-being outcomes of families also need to consider sociotemporal factors.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic reshuffled the time allocation of the U.S. population

Author: Hoxhaj Rezart

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

This paper studies how the COVID-19 pandemic reshuffled the time allocation of the U.S. population. We focus on the whole set of daily activities and look both at participation (probability to engage in a given activity) and on the time spent (in minutes) in those activities. More in specific, we investigate the heterogeneity  in time redistribution during the pandemic across gender, immigration status and area of residence  (metropolitan vs. non metropolitan areas). Moreover, we calculate the amount of time redistributed by these sub-groups of individuals and also the differences in terms of activities’ variety.

To do this, we use the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for the years 2019 and 2020. The methodology includes both parametric analysis and simple descriptive statistics of weighted population averages. This analysis sheds light on the overall impact of COVID–19 pandemic and how it affected the daily behavior of the U.S. population. This has relevant implications for the well-being of the individuals and also relevant policy implications for policy not only aiming to attenuate the consequences of the current pandemic but also for interventions aimed to prevent and the consequences of future similar shocks.

A scoping review of time-use research: areas of substantial research interest and gaps.

Author: Kamila Kolpashnikova

Contributing author(s): Kamila Kolpashnikova (First and primary author); Shital Desai (second author)

This scoping review aims to map the research area and identify empirical gaps in the literature on time use to guide future work. Using a scoping study framework, the Scopus database was searched with relevant keywords in the title, abstract or manuscript’s keywords ({time use} OR {time-use}). After de-duplication and exclusion criteria checks, 5628 articles containing the keywords were analyzed. Using topic modelling and the Non-negative Matrix Factorization model on articles’ abstracts, we identify a range of the topics covered in time use research, highlight the areas to which most research interests were devoted, and the areas where more empirical effort was would be needed. The results suggest that the topic areas with the largest research focus in literature are gender differences in unpaid work, parenthood and childcare, travel time, sleep and leisure, and physical activity time. However, many facets of daily life are left underutilized despite the richness of time use data.

A Twenty-First Century of Solitude? Time Alone and Together in the United States

Author: Enghin ATalay

This paper explores trends in time alone and with others in the United States. Since 2003, Americans have increasingly spent their free time alone, on leisure at home, and have decreasingly spent their free time with individuals from other households. These trends are more pronounced for non-white individuals, for males, for the less educated, and for individuals from lower-income households. Survey respondents spending a large fraction of their free time alone report lower subjective well-being. As a result, differential trends in time alone suggest that between-group inequality may be increasing more quickly than previous research has reported.

Data quality and recall bias in time-diary research. The effects of prolonged recall periods in self-administered online time-use surveys.

Author: Petrus te Braak

Contributing author(s): Petrus te Braak, Theun Pieter van Tienoven, Joeri Minnen, Ignace Glorieux

Previous research shows that a prolonged recall period is associated with lower data quality in time-diary research. In these studies, the recall period is roughly estimated based on the period between the assigned diary day and the agreed collection day. Precisely because this is so rudimentary, little is known about the duration of the average recall period and its consequences for data quality. Recent advances in online methodology now allow for a more profound investigation of the recall period using timestamps. By means of a refined indicator, we examine the duration of the average recall period, to what extent this duration is related to socioeconomic characteristics, and how a prolonged recall period affects data quality. We demonstrate that, using online time-diary data collected from 8,535 teachers in Belgium, the average recall period is less than 24 hours for most respondents, although that respondents with many time constraints have extended recall periods. Additionally, a prolonged recall period indeed has negative consequences for data quality. Quality deterioration already arises several hours after an activity has been completed, much sooner than previous research has indicated. The importance of limiting the recall period is discussed and recommendations are formulated to improve the data quality. 

Study protocol of the population sampled, online Belgian Time Use Survey of 2022 (BTUS22)

Author: Joeri Minnen

Contributing author(s): Ignace Glorieux, Theun Pieter van Tienoven

Background

Time use surveys (TUS) collect data on daily life, such as time spent on and participation in paid work, unpaid work, care work, volunteering, and leisure. TUS are typically administered at the level of the household and their data support, for example, social and family policies and measuring the value of household production. Although paper-and-pencil based TUS have had their merits in the past, they are expensive because of multiple interviewer visits and extensive coding, leading statistical institutes search for online alternatives. This protocol reports on the Belgian Time Use Survey of 2022, which will be the first population sampled Belgian TUS that will be entirely conducted online.

Materials and methods

Household reference persons are sampled from the National Register and asked to complete a household grid and household questionnaire. Hereafter all eligible household members (≥10 years) are asked to complete an individual pre- questionnaire, to keep a seven-day time-diary in sync with all other household members, and to complete an individual post-questionnaire. The initial invitation letter is sent to the household by post and contains login credentials for the reference person to log in to the data collection platform Modular Online Time Use Survey (MOTUS). The study will be administered, managed, and monitored online via the data collection platform MOTUS and largely follows the Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS) guidelines of EUROSTAT.

Discussion

This protocol answers to challenges NSIs face in producing official statistics, such as tight budgets and the need to collect data via modern and innovative techniques. Identified challenges relate to the need to incorporate the household level and the need to sync all members’ time-diaries, and to communicate with respondents via automated e-mail and notifications, which should guide respondents from one task to the other. Identified strengths relate to the ability to closely monitor respondents’ progress in the MOTUS back office and adjust their progress during the data registration process. With this, the BTUS22 answers to new user demands for high- quality data and statistics.

Privacy in online time diary research. Insights into MOTUS as a privacy by design data collection platform.

Author: Joeri Minnen

Contributing author(s): Ken Peersman

Privacy and Security are an essential part of online research, and this is even more true for online time diary research as participants provide input which are closely linked to personal data. However it is not an easy task to fully comply to it. This presentation discusses how MOTUS deals with Privacy when collecting data. MOTUS is the data collection platform developed by the Research Group TOR of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and their spin-off hbits. 

Privacy within MOTUS is addressed on multiple levels. One in the legal level (A), a second is the definition level that can be defined from out the back-office of MOTUS (B), and the third is the architectural level (C). The technical level can be further subdivided into requirements to which an app have to comply to in order to be published in an app platform (eg. Playstore and Appstore) (B1) and, to what extent MOTUS enhances extra privacy preserving actions (B2). A and B1 are almost obligatory, and C an absolute necessity in order to be a stable platform. The core of this presentation is however B2 in order to show why MOTUS is build ‘privacy by design’. To it more clear the geolocation (GPS) plugin is used as an example.

(A) MOTUS has a written Privacy Policy (https://www.motusresearch.io/privacy/full/) holding information on how personal data is taken into account within MOTUS studies. In order to be able to collect location data, the policy also describes the difference between Foreground and Background tracking. Background tracking is an important feature for diary research.

(B1) The application needs to ask for the consent in order to activate the sensors of a Smart device (Smartphone, Smartwatch, Tablet, …). Usually users are asked to provide consent in a 2-stage approach, where in the last step the platform is asking the decisive question whether or not to grant permission to track the movement of a device (as a proxy to the user). The permission or the refusal is captured in the system settings of the application. An application cannot ask for a consent for the second time. So the preceding screens to ask for the consent are very important. More experienced Smart device users can adjust the system settings.

(B2) MOTUS organises the tasks respondents have to complete within a lineair research flow. Based on pre-defined actions (like complete, but eg. also based on timing) respondents proceed through the different tasks in order to complete the overall study. Tasks can take into account a survey, a diary, the composition of a group, the reading of information, … . With the geolocation plugin it was also possible to collect where people are, and which kind of transport they’ve used. To better protect the respondents’ privacy it is a requirement in MOTUS to attach the geolocation plugin (and so tracking of respondents) to one or more specific tasks within the research flow. In this way the tracking as such is strictly related to the Research Question at hand, and the data inflow of geolocation points is clearly defined. When the task is completed, the inflow of geolocation points stops. Moreover, MOTUS further takes into account the following features:

• a. in the menu of the application respondents can switch off tracking without reverting the system settings; in this case it is possible for respondents to pauze (or to snooze) the data inflow
• b. geofences can be defined in the back-office of MOTUS which further reduce the area of tracking (eg. only in Brussels)
• c. geofence actions (entry, exit, dwell) can be used to create extra actions like sending a push notification with eg. a small survey
• d. the geotracking points can be provided back to the respondent in a map on the application; in the future it will also be used on a productive scale to provide (clustered) information back to the respondent as tentative data

 (C) The principle of MOTUS as a 3-tier architecture is introduced.

How to design a household level time-use survey? Introduction to the new developed My Group-component in MOTUS.

Author: Joeri Minnen

Based on the HETUS-guidelines, the individual perspective as well as the household perspective is important. For online studies it is often a burden to relate different persons to the same group, in this case the same household. To arrange this, MOTUS uses a new developed My Group-component, which can be used to composite a household, the ‘My Household’. Based on the information given, household members can be invited to participate together with the reference person of the household to the Time Use Survey. These processes run automatically.

Per household member the first name, last name, email, birthday and gender is asked to complete, as a first step. In a second step the relation to the reference person, and if more people are living in the household, to the other household members is provided. The relations from which the reference person can choose from can be defined in the back-office of MOTUS. The relation can be defined gender specific (male, female, x and generic). An example is brother, sister and sibling. For every position a further description can be given. 

Equally important is that also the reverse relation can be defined in MOTUS. An example is mother towards daughter, and visa versa. This makes it possible to display the reverse relation and so to avoid that the same information has to be filled in twice.  

The ‘My Group’-component belongs to a study in particular, and so a group can be defined differently for each study. Also other groups than households can be defined by the same component. In relation to the ‘My Group’-component also a ‘Virtual waiting’-room can be used. In this virtual room all persons belonging to the same group can see in which phase of the study the other group members are. Reference persons have the possibility to exclude the further participation of a group member. The virtual room can be used to eg. synchronise the starting time of a time diary between the group members. In this way everyone completes the same days in the diary.

This presentation will show the My Group-component in a live demonstration and will show how this component can provide extra value to SDG data collections and time use policies.

Collecting a time use survey using a mixed mode approach

Author: Rachel Leistra

Contributing author(s): Patricia Houle

For its 2022 Time Use Survey, Statistics Canada is using a 24-hour recall time use diary developed in such a way that it can be used in two collection modes.  This presentation will be separated in three parts: starting by outlining the changes between 2015 and 2022, followed by an overview of the qualitative testing of the application and the complexity of the collection strategy within the constraints of Statistics Canada’s collection management tool.

Key changes include a new response category hierarchy within the diary aligned with ICATUS. New follow-up questions surrounding unpaid care and work, as well as eating, and new modules on childcare, teleworking, and additional questions on transportation have also been included.

Qualitative testing was done virtually due to COVID-19 restrictions. This allowed for testing to be done across the country, which came with some challenges as well as positive effects. The results of this testing led to significant improvements in the diary and childcare module.

The collection strategy differs significantly from previous iterations and includes the use of email for the initial invitation. The complexity of time use collection needs led to challenges in the CATI collection strategy.

Video tutorial Belgian Survey on Time Use

Author: Joeri Minnen

To support the Belgian Survey on Time Use survey a video tutorial has been created.

The video is available via YouTube: https://youtu.be/TjhfBhkFJjo

Different chapters are listed to easily go to the information and the support a participant needs: 

00:00 Invitation to participate

00:24 Installation MOTUS app

00:52 Start with the app, login and activate account

01:58 A household survey and reference person

02:49 Household composition and questionnaire

04:07 Start time use survey

04:15 Pre-questionnaire

04:36 Virtual waiting room

04:53 Time diary start and registration of first activity

07:52 Navigating the timeline, adjusting an activity and finish the diary

09:03 After questionnaire

09:15 MOTUS Assistant and help pages via www.motusresearch.io

09:57 Participate via web browser

Participants to the conference will be able to scan a QR-code from a poster and watch the movie.

Gender Differences in Desired Alone Time among Canadian Parents of Young Children: Household Manager Mothers versus Domestic Employee Fathers

Author: Tom Buchanan

We use the 2015 Canadian time use survey to analyze gender differences in desired alone time and the gender gap in parenting time for Canadian parents with at least one child under five years of age (N=1120). Over half of mothers with young children report wanting more time alone compared to about one-third of fathers. For mothers, household work, parenting time, and market work are predictive of self-reporting desired alone time. Surprisingly, actual time reported alone does not seem to be related to desired alone time. Mothers with young children do many hours more of parenting, house work, and spend less time in market work as well as alone time. The gender gap in parenting remains persistent and predominantly unexplained by characteristic differences between mothers and fathers in our models. Controlling for those differences as well as other demographic factors, we found that women desire more alone time as parenting time increases compared to fathers. We argue that the amount and higher level of responsibilities and stress (resembling managerial level) faced by mothers parenting young children leads to personal isolation resulting in a desire to be alone. Fathers who play a less central role (resembling employee level) in domestic work are able to participate in market work more, have more time to engage in their jobs, and desire less alone time. Theoretical and policy implications of this emerging perspective are discussed.

The impact of a shorter workweek on social relationships

Author: Francisca Mullens

Contributing author(s): Ignace Glorieux

In 2019, a Belgian women’s organisation experimented with a 30-hour workweek for all of their fulltime employees. They reduced their working hours from 36 to 30 per week for one year. A working time reduction gives people some more time outside of work and offers the possibility to synchronize time better with the social environment (Brown et al., 2011). Better synchronized leisure time and more time with family and friends might also enhance the quality of the relationships. Based on both time-use diary and survey data gathered before and during the experiment as well as qualitative interview data from the employees that reduced their working hours, we investigate how social relationships and the quantity and quality of time with family and friends has changed in the shorter working week. We find that those that reduced their working week with 6 hours, spent more time with their children, but a little less time with partner, family and friends. Relatively, more leisure time was spent alone. However, the time spent with family is valued more. The quality of the time spent with children and the bond they feel has also improved. No differences were found in marital satisfaction. 

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

Author: Ignace Glorieux

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. As such a lot of the rich and detailed information in the diary data is aggregated and summarized and a lot of the potentials of time-use data remain unexplored.

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 studies 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.

Recent Changes in husband and wife's housework and working hours in Japan

Author: Masao Takahashi

The structure of the gender role division of married couples began to be formed in Japan from the beginning of the 20th century. It spread to a wide range of societies during the high economic growth period around the '60s. Suppose we divide this gender division into that in the public sphere (working) and in the domestic sphere (housework). The former division has changed due to increased women's social advancement in recent years. However, the latter division in housework is said to be still firmly maintained until recently.

Based on the above background, aiming to obtain new knowledge that contributes to the progress of work-style reforms and work-life balance promoted by the Japanese government, this study analyzes the recent changes in couples' housework and working hours, in which we used the statistical microdata of the Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities conducted by the Statistics Bureau of Japan in 1996, 2006, and 2016.

The analysis revealed new insights concerning changes in husband and wife's housework and working hours: despite some improvement in imbalances between husband and wife seen in 2016, the situation that the wife's heavy housework burden continues, especially in double-income households; long working hours for husbands (wives) have contributed to a decrease in their own housework hours and an increase in their spouse's housework hours, which is the trend unchanged in the last 20 years; there is a slight tendency for the husband's housework time to increase when the wife's working hours are long, or the youngest child is an infant.

Fathers’ Leave and Mothers’ (Solo) Care: How Paternity Leave Policy Shapes Mother-Child Time

Author: Dana Wray

Reserved paternity leave policy, which aims to incentivize fathers’ leave-taking, is linked to shifts in the gendered division of paid and unpaid labour. Although research shows paternity leave impacts sex specialization in different-sex families by shifting mothers’ time in paid work and fathers’ time with children, it is less clear how mothers’ time with children is affected. If this policy leads fathers to take on more responsibility for children, as previous research shows, mothers may either decrease their time with children (to do more paid work) or redistribute their time to more valued activities. Yet, given norms of intensive mothering – which position time investments into children as part of being a ‘good mother’ – paternity leave policy may not lead to decreases in mother-child time. Using time use data from the 2005 and 2010 Canadian General Social Survey on Time Use, this study implements difference-in-differences models to estimate plausibly causal effects of the 2006 parental leave policy reform in the province of Quebec on mother-child time. This study leverages the rich detail of time diaries to operationalize three different dimensions of mothers’ involvement. First, I examine the total time co-present with children, which includes childcare activities but also time when children are present in mothers’ own activities (e.g., leisure, meals, housework). Second, I break down whether time in childcare is spent in “routine” care – typically feminized, inflexible, and non-discretionary activities – compared to “developmental” care – more discretionary activities, often play-based or aimed at children’s development. Third, I investigate whether mothers are solo parenting or whether fathers are also present in “family” time. Quebec’s reserved paternity leave policy had a plausibly causal, positive effect on mother-child time – but only for specific types of time. Mothers exposed to the policy spent nearly 50 daily minutes more in routine childcare activities when solo parenting. Despite fathers’ increased involvement according to past studies, mothers do not change their “family” time (parenting when the father is also present), nor do they reduce time in more gendered childcare activities. Ultimately, these findings further our understanding of how paternity leave policy reshapes caregiving in different-sex couples.

Canada’s Care Economy: Using Time Use Data to Measure Unpaid Care Work

Author: Dana Wray

Contributing author(s): Jane Badets

Unpaid care work is not only a critical pillar of society, but also a fundamental source of gender inequality, as recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 5, Target 5.4). The need for care is intensifying: the ILO projects that the number of people in need of care globally will rise to at least 2.3 billion by 2030. The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the urgency of the “care crisis,” and has exacerbated the uneven burden of unpaid care work. In the face of this growing demand for care as well as the looming post-pandemic recovery, this presentation poses three research questions: 1) How much unpaid care work is done in Canada? 2) Who does this unpaid care work? 3) How can we use Canadian time use data to measure and value unpaid care?To explore these questions, we draw on ongoing conceptual and analytic work from the care economy project at Statistics Canada, which aims to scope and measure Canada’s care economy. This project defines the care economy as that sector of the broader economy comprising the provision of unpaid and paid care work that supports the physical, psychological, and emotional needs of care-dependent adults (with long-term conditions, disabilities, or functional limitations) and children (under 15 years old). We first use the General Social Survey on Time Use across nearly 30 years (1986-2015) to estimate the amount of unpaid care work provided by Canadians for care-dependent adults and children. Notably, we show how estimates vary widely depending on how unpaid care work and the care economy are conceptualized and operationalized. Next, we highlight how unpaid care work is unequally distributed in Canada, exposing uneven social and economic realities for diverse groups. Finally, we assess the advantages as well as key limitations of Canadian time use data for measuring and valuing the unpaid sector of the care economy. This presentation discusses insights from ongoing work on Statistics Canada’s care economy project that will be of interest for researchers, policymakers, and advocates.

Not Enough? Trends in U.S. Fathers’ Time with Children in Daily Activities, 1975-2018

Author: Melissa Milkie

Contributing author(s): Kei Nomaguchi, Liana Sayer, Dana Wray

Most U.S. fathers feel time strains with children, with about half- to two-thirds of residential fathers reporting they don’t spend enough time with children. Such felt time pressures among fathers remain high or have increased in recent decades, even though fathers have been doing more childcare since the 1970s, more than tripling their time, from 2 to more than 7 hours per week. But what about men’s time with children more generally? Using the 1965-2018 American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS), this study examines partnered fathers’ time co-present with residential children outside of doing childcare over more than half a century. We show that fathers’ total co-present time with children has increased substantially too. In 1975, outside of childcare time, fathers spent 17 hours per week together with their children during activities like leisure, domestic tasks and eating meals. By 2018, fathers included children in their daily activities (outside of childcare) for 25 hours per week. This extra hour per day of being “around” children is a considerable increase on top of the rise in childcare, especially given that the most recent data, from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), has a stricter definition of co-presence – children had to be “in the room with” or accompanying fathers during activities to be counted as together. Fathers are not simply caring for children more, but also including them in their daily lives to a greater extent – especially in their leisure time and when doing other domestic tasks like housework. Time eating meals together with children stayed stable over the period. In all, today’s fathers spend more time with children across their whole days, not just “taking care” of children, indicating that fathers have become more child-focused in general. We discuss potential factors contributing to fathers’ continued or increased time strains – feeling not enough time with children despite significantly higher co-presence – for future investigations. 

Validation of an automated wearable camera-based image-assisted recall method and the 24-hour recall method for assessing women’s time allocation in Uganda

Author: Andrea L. S. Bulungu

Contributing author(s): Luigi Palla, Jan Priebe, Lora Forsythe, Pamela Katic, Gwen Varley, Bernice D. Galinda, Nakimuli Sarah, Joweria Nambooze, Kate Wellard and Elaine L. Ferguson

Accurate data is essential for investigating relationships between maternal time use patterns and health outcomes. The 24-hour recall (24HR) has traditionally been used to collect time use data, however automated wearable cameras (AWCs) with an image assisted recall (IAR) may reduce recall bias. This study aimed to evaluate their concurrent criterion validity for assessing women's time use in rural Eastern Ugandan. Women's (n=211) time allocations estimated via the AWC-IAR and 24HR methods were compared with direct observation (criterion method) using the Bland–Altman limits of agreement (LOA) method of analysis and Cronbach's coefficient alpha (time allocation) or Cohen’s κ (concurrent activities). Systematic bias varied from 1 minute (domestic chores) to 226 minutes (caregiving) for 24HR and 1 minute (own production) to 109 minutes (socializing) for AWC-IAR. The LOA were within 2 hours for employment, own production, and self-care for 24HR and AWC-IAR but exceeded 11 hours (24HR) and 9 hours (AWC-IAR) for caregiving and socializing. The LOA were within 4 concurrent activities for 24HR (-1.1 to 3.7) and AWC-IAR (-3.2 to 3.2). Cronbach's alpha for time allocation ranged from 0.1728 (socializing) to 0.8056 (own production) for 24HR and 0.2270 (socializing) to 0.7938 (own production) for AWC-IAR. For assessing women's time allocations at the population level, the 24HR and AWC-IAR methods are accurate and reliable for employment, own production, and domestic chores but poor for caregiving and socializing.

Who Is Doing the Chores and Childcare in Dual-Earner Couples during the COVID-19 Era of Working from Home?

Author: Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia

Contributing author(s): Victoria Vernon

In 2020, parents’ work-from-home days increased fourfold following the initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period compared to 2015–2019. At the same time, many daycares closed, and the majority of public schools offered virtual or hybrid classrooms, increasing the demand for household-provided childcare. Using time diaries from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and looking at parents in dual-earner couples, we examine parents’ weekday workday time allocated to paid work, chores, and childcare in the COVID-19 era by the couple’s joint work location arrangements. We determine the work location of the ATUS respondent directly from their diary and proxy the partner’s work-from-home status using the share of workers reporting work from home in their occupation. When their partners worked on-site, mothers and fathers working from home spent more time on childcare, especially mothers, compared to those on-site; fathers spent more time on household chores. However, only mothers’ total unpaid and paid work burden was higher. In the fall, fathers working from home worked substantially fewer paid hours and spent even more time on household production. When both parents worked from home compared to both worked on-site, mothers and fathers working from home worked roughly equally fewer paid hours and did more secondary childcare, though fathers did more household production, suggesting they shared the increased work burden resulting from the pandemic more equally. However, in the fall, only mothers did more childcare when both worked from home. We also find that mothers spread their work throughout the day when working from home.

Location and social contact during Covid-19

Author: Clarke Wilson

Location and social contact during Covid-19 – Abstract

IATUR 44th Conference, Montreal

Clarke Wilson, Health Services and Policy Research Institute

Queen’s University, April, 2022

For almost all Canadians, experience with life during a pandemic began with Covid-19 in March 2020. In order to reduce transmission, the provincial public health response was to implement a collection of recommendations and mandates regarding personal isolation, business restrictions and closures, social distancing recommendations, and travel bans.

A research team lead by Dr. Dorothy Kessler of the School of Rehabilitation Therapy, Queen’s was awarded a SSHRC grant in 2020 to examine “the decisions people are making every day about how to structure their day, use their time, look after themselves and those they love, and act in the best interests of the broader population.” This paper introduces one of the project objectives; to identify patterns of activity and time use in response to public health isolation and distancing objectives.

This presentation reports the hourly patterns of time in-home, out-of-home, with-household and with-others as measured by a longitudinal diary survey and questionnaire conducted mainly in the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Public Health Region. Respondents were recruited from the membership lists of service agencies known to the investigative team. Investigators conducted three phases of the survey in late 2020 and the first half of 2021. We describe the tempograms of the diary episodes for the three survey phases and compare the patterns of location and accompaniment with those reported in the 2015 Canadian General Social Survey, Ontario sample.

The preliminary analysis shows that time spent out of home and in the presence of non-household persons declined substantially as compared with 2015 provinical data. This is consistent with public health objectives. The trend seems to have persisted through the three waves of infection and Ministry of Health (Ontario) public health policy directives that had been recorded up to mid-2021. Differences of the daily location-accompaniment patterns among the survey phases and GSS are measured by dissimilarity indices.

The question emerging from the first look at the data is: “to what extent is this impact attributable to public health policy interventions or to other factors?”

Estimating the magnitude of Time Spent in ‘Unpaid Domestic and Caregiving’ activities in India: Unravelling the Gender Inequality

Author: PALLAVI PALLAVI GUPTA

Contributing author(s): Dr. Falguni Pattanaik

Gender inequality is attributed to Indian society in the form of ‘time use’ in different activities which have imperative implications on the economic, social, and political life of the individuals. Therefore, the objective of the study is to measure the magnitude of gender inequality in time spent in one of the major activities—‘unpaid domestic and caregiving’, within Indian households considering the socio-economic and demographic features. These activities are crucial for human existence yet are considered to be ‘women’s work’ and affects their overall well-being and employment opportunities as the labour force participation rate of women in India is among the lowest in the world. The study is based on Indian Time Use Survey 2019 conducted by National Statistical Office (NSO) and uses the average time spent on these activities as estimate of time use. The study reveals that gender inequalities are present at a greater magnitude in ‘unpaid domestic and caregiving’ activities in India. The disproportionate burden of these activities falls on women as the average time spent by women in ‘unpaid domestic and caregiving’ activities is 241 minutes per day whereas men spend 31 minutes per day on these activities. Moreover, the amount of time spent in these activities is not homogeneous but varies with socio, economic and demographic characteristics of individuals. The average time spent in ‘unpaid domestic and caregiving’ activities is highest for women who belong to 30-45 age group, currently married, highly educated (graduate and above), living in rural areas, not in labour force and from upper income households. For inclusive growth of Indian economy, the national policies should aim to recognize, reduce and redistribute the women’s burden of ‘unpaid domestic and caregiving’ activities. The state should invest in physical and social infrastructure to reduce drudgery of ‘unpaid domestic and caregiving’ activities in rural areas, ensure flexible work-place practices to decrease work-family conflicts and enhance employment opportunities for women. 

Blurred Boundaries: A Day in the Life of a Teacher

Author: Seth Gershenson

Contributing author(s): Victoria Gibney, Kristine West

Burnout, stress, and work life balance challenges faced by teachers have received renewed interest due to the myriad disruptions and changes to K-12 schooling brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, even prior to the pandemic relatively little was known about teachers’ time use and the blurring of time at work and time and home, and how this compares to that of other similarly educated professionals. We use daily time-diary data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for 3,227 teachers and 1,947 professionals in similarly prosocial occupations from 2003 to 2019 to examine occupational differences in time use. Preliminary results suggest that compared to observationally similar non-teachers, teachers spend significantly more time volunteering at their workplace and completing work outside the workplace. On average, teachers spend 11.8 more minutes per day working outside of the workplace (largely at home) on weekdays and 37.7 more minutes on weekends than non-teachers. This weekend disparity is particularly large among secondary school teachers. Teachers are also more likely to perform volunteer work at their primary place of employment (the school) than similar professionals in other fields; this is true on both the extensive and intensive margins. All of this suggests that before the widespread switch to online and hybrid learning necessitated by the COVID pandemic, teachers were already navigating blurrier work-life boundaries than their counterparts in similar professions. This has important implications for teacher turnover and for the effectiveness and engagement of teachers who remain in the profession. Finally, we present findings on occupational differences in non-work activities, disaggregated by gender and caregiving status, to understand potential tradeoffs in leisure, personal care, and household activities. 

Unemployment and Well-Being in a Social Context. Evidence from the UK Time-Use Survey.

Author: Thi Truong An Hoang

Contributing author(s): Andreas Knabe

Our study exploits the UK Time-Use Survey 2014/15 to analyse to what extent the availability and quality of social contacts might explain how employed and unemployed persons differ in their experienced well-being. We quantitatively decompose the affective well-being gap by employment statuses into the social-contact-composition, activity-composition and adjusted well-being gap. Our analysis shows that compared to the employed, the unemployed spend more hours alone which are less enjoyable than being with others. On average, the unemployed perceive a higher enjoyment score over the entire day which is mainly driven by the shift of unemployed person’ time from less enjoyable working to more enjoyable non-work activities, and by the substitution of more aggregable time around family for less unpleasant time with contacts at work. The former is particularly strong and dominates for single individuals, while the latter plays an important role for the subgroup of married/cohabitating persons. Given the same share of waking time spent on the same kind of activities, we find that the unemployed would perceive less emotional well-being on average. Such well-being loss is significantly associated with the larger share of time the unemployed must spend doing activities alone, and is not solely due to the saddening effect of unemployment on emotional ratings. Furthermore, looking closely at the employed suggests that, the access to contacts at work is important for the single individuals, while time spent with families and acquaintances outside the workplace matters more to the affective well-being of those who have a partner.

The Future Of Work: How Successful Employees Spend Their Time

Author: Mark Mark Ellwood

In the workplace, time-use data offers pragmatic insights into employee productivity and what considerations need to be made as employers plan for the future of work.  This paper examines workplace trends based on corporate time studies conducted since 1990. The data includes measurements of 2,500 different activities tracked by employees themselves in 41 countries.

Employees tracked their own time for two weeks using a simple, portable, electronic device. Unique to this methodology is the aggregation of “ideal” time profiles. These represent a proxy for best practices. By comparing actual time use to ideal results, performance patterns can be compared among those whose time profiles are consistent with best practices, versus those whose profiles exhibit less effective time management. The paper examines a variety of knowledge worker roles, from front line clerks to senior managers. The findings focus on planning time, the burden of administrative duties, the impact of meetings, personal breaks, and work-related travel. The latter will be important as organizations consider a shift to remote communication.

Motherhood and Mentoring Networks: The unequal impact of overwork on women’s workplace mentoring networks

Author: Soohan Kim

Contributing author(s): Hwajin Shin (Korea University)

Using longitudinal data on 1,711 female managers in South Korean firms, this study examines how time, culture, and workplace structure affect women’s mentoring networks. Our analyses demonstrate that women with fewer time constraints and who work longer hours are more likely to have a male mentor. However, when motherhood status is considered, work hours and time constraints are not significant predictors of having a mentor for mothers. Rather, organizational flexibility and work-life policies influence whether mothers have mentors, but those mothers who work long hours and display minimal domestic commitments benefit the most from the availability of flexibility. Findings suggest that long work hours and time constraints affect women’s marginalization in workplace relationships, and corporate practices mitigating work hour expectations can alleviate this impact for women with children.

Outline of the 2021 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities of Japan

Author: Mari Nakamura

The Statistics Bureau of Japan (SBJ) conducted the 2021 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities of Japan (STULA) in October 2021. In this paper, I would like to introduce the outline of the 2021 survey.

STULA aims to obtain comprehensive data on daily patterns of time allocation and on leisure activities. The survey has been conducted every five years since 1976, and the 2021 STULA is the tenth.

In this survey, about 91,000 households are selected and about 190,000 household members aged 10 and over report their activities for each 15 minute intervals during consecutive two days which are designated by SBJ, and respond to survey items such as “activity of caring”, “acceptance of child care services”, and “wish for work”.

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.

Concerning survey method, SBJ introduced new collection channel. SBJ developed electronic questionnaire for smartphone and tablet so that survey respondents easily understood and filled survey questions. These efforts were effective to improve online response rate.

In this paper, I would also like to describe the new efforts for the 2021 Survey conducted under the influence of COVID-19: implementation of online responses by smartphones, new survey items related to telework, and so on. The results of the 2021 survey will be released sequentially from September 2022.

Estimating the number of and working hours of young carers in Japan

Author: Yumiko Yamamoto

There are a few surveys to identify young carers’ issues in Japan. One study conducted in 2020 had sample data of high school students and estimated that 5.7% of the 8th graders and 4.1% of the 11th graders were young carers. Another survey conducted in 2021 targeted the 6th graders (elementary school children) and the university students in their 20s. 6.5% of the 6th graders and 2.9% of the college students surveyed said they currently take care of family members. While these surveys were the first studies with the national sample data, they do not provide the number of young carers and the hours they work based on various definitions of young carers. 

The proposed study uses the 2016 time use microdata of Japan, the latest time use data available, to estimate the number of young carers, the hours they spent on care work, and their activities. The time-use data provides the household information, so we also can analyze the young carers’ contributions vis-à-vis the contributions of other household members, based on the composition, sex, and age of the household members and each member of economic contribution. Since Japan’s time use data has a sample of 10 years old and above, it excludes young carers at 9 years old or younger. However, micro time use data contains demographic information of age, sex, marital status among others, we can estimate the number of young carers regardless of the types of schools they attend and based on various definitions whether young carers are 18 years or younger, up to 24 years, or up to 30 years old. I predict that more female young carers exit than male carers and types of care work would be different by sex. This study also sheds new light on the utilization of time use microdata. 

The Activity of Polish Women on the Labor Market during first decade of EU Membership - Marketization Hypothesis

Author: Jacek Jankiewicz

Contributing author(s): Przemysław Garsztka

Focusing on the marketization hypothesis during our analysis, all persons were categorized by gender, presence/absence of children less than six years of age, three education groups and three age groups. This gave us 36 cells for each edition of the TUS data and a potential sample of 72 grouped observations. Market work time was related to household time and leisure in a linear form which should showed that market time negatively depends on household work as well as on leisure time. Our estimates shoved that market work and housework are closer substitutes than market work and leisure. So the reduction of household work leads to a greater labour supply than a reduction of leisure. Next, we related market hours to the ratio of household hours to other nonmarket time - the sum of leisure time and personal time. At this stage a non-linear form for estimation was used just to avoid the collinearity that would result from including all forms of time in a linear equation. Marketization implies that the coefficient of market time is negative, so that an hour of market time affects household time more than other forms of non-market time. The marketization hypothesis is also supported by the increase in the labor supply of women, which took place in the period between the research on the time budget (2003/04 and 2013).

We also estimated parameters of the models which took into account additional socioeconomic variables corresponding to the grouping variables for the populations. We introduced control variables covering such characteristics as age, educational level of respondents, the number of children and other features included in the databases. It helped to determine the factors that influence the amount of work at market and at home.

Estimated models permitted, among other things, to answer questions about factors that have a statistically significant impact on the economic activity of women in Poland. The studied marketization process was mostly pronounced in the group of the youngest women (18-24 years old). The described phenomenon can be stimulated by various factors, including increased interest in obtaining higher education by women, development of the service sector, increasing opportunities for part-time work, changes in social norms, and the general enrichment of society. In Polish conditions, virtually each of the above-mentioned factors played a role.

Does Family Policy Matter in Women's Capability? : A Comparative Study of Time Use Based on Capability Approach

Author: Seonwoo Seonwoo Yoon

Contributing author(s): Young Jun Choi

There are currently at least two overlapping but distinct Work-Life Balance (WLB) discourses: personal control/management of time and workplace flexibility. However, recent literature argued that these discourses have overlooked the basic underpinning of work-personal life problems and tried to figure out a quick-fix solution. In particular, existing studies tend to view the scope of women’s work and life as composed of paid and unpaid work, emphasizing women’s ethics of care and neglecting other life spheres such as civic engagement and leisure. Although policy measures and institutional supports have become increasingly important in the WLB literature, there has been little effort in analyzing the impact of these policies on women’s possibility of utilizing resources to achieve WLB taking the aforementioned limitations into account. In this regard, this study attempted to analyze the effect of family policies on women’s capabilities focusing on the concepts of ‘policy-driven means’ and ‘situated agency’ by utilizing Sen’s Capability Approach. Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS) was used to examine how various family policy provision types – cash payments, services, and time-off – affect women’s capability, which was measured as the proportion of unpaid work hours in their free time. A comparative analysis was conducted using a multilevel model. We further analyzed what different mechanisms these policy types have according to women’s education level and employment type. The results showed that services and time-off contributed to lowering the level of responsibility burden of unpaid work for mothers, but the effect was dependent on their socioeconomic status. Finally, we discussed theoretical and policy implications. 

What are the consequences of daily activity patterns for longer term affectual dispositions?

Author: Elena Elena Mylona

Contributing author(s): Jonathan Gershuny, Oriel Sullivan

Affectual states or dispositions (happiness, life satisfaction, feelings of wellbeing) are diffuse descriptions that survey respondents may attach to current or previous historical periods or life-stages. By contrast, evidence of enjoyment, stress, anxiety or “instantaneous utility” (Kahneman 1994) relate to specific circumstances occurring at particular points in time.  The former are appropriately estimated from questions that explicitly emphasize atemporality:  “how do you feel, generally or normally….”.  The latter by contrast link the affect to a specific circumstance located at a point in time. (The UK Office of National Statistics ONS4 affect questionnaire battery somewhat confusingly combines these perspectives, with two atemporal and two temporally specific questions.)

Our study uses the UK 2016-21 CaDDI (‘click and drag diary’) data; a set of online time-use diary surveys (6,5K diary days), designed to capture objective and subjective characteristics of daily life before and during successive stages of the pandemic in the UK. It includes, as well as standard demographic variables, various questions about regular monthly activities, as well as the ONS4 and a range of other measures including the General Health Questionnaire.  It also contains a 7-point “how much did you enjoy this activity?” field to be completed throughout the diary day.

We attempt to decompose the variation in the ONS4, GHQ12 and other affectual indicators, looking at the contribution of the instantaneous utility field and the daily activity mix, as compared to the variation associated with demographic and other longer-term characteristics of the diary respondents.

This study follows a quasi-experimental style design, as the five COVID-era waves were collected under different sets of lockdown rules, allowing us to capture activity enjoyment in different settings. Better understanding of the effect of external shocks and regulations on people’s behaviours will help generate timely and relevant findings on how people are living their lives and how this impacts their own wellbeing and that of the wider society; aiming at helping inform policymakers and other stakeholders in public health and welfare in their decision-making.

Racial disparities in daily affect in the United States from 1965 to 2012

Author: Sarah James

Contributing author(s): Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Corey Culver

Context and objective: In the United States, patterns of time use and the affective nature of time have changed dramatically over the last half-century (Krueger 2007). However, we know little about whether these changes varied by race. This is surprising because this era encompassed both major advances in formal supports for racial equality (e.g., civil rights legislation) and the persistence of racism. It is not clear whether these countervailing trends led to convergence or divergence of experiences by race. Thus, our goal is to estimate changes in the affective experience of day-to-day life by race over this period. 

Methods: Part I of the project uses data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) Well-Being Module, collected in 2010, 2012, and 2013. This module measured the degree to which respondents felt a series of emotions during selected activities in their time diary. We summarize this data using the u-index, a measure of the unpleasantness of an activity (Kahneman and Krueger 2006). We calculate the u-index for each activity separately for race-sex-age-specific groups. 

Part II of the project, in progress, will link these race-sex-age-specific affect measures to the American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS), a harmonized series of time use studies spanning 1965 to 2012. (Despite the large time gap, Robinson (2013) found that contemporary ATUS affect data are similar to the limited set of affect measures available in historic time use datasets.) We will use this historic data on time use to estimate how the affective experience of day-to-day life changed from 1965 to 2012 by race. 

Results: There are few differences in the affective experience of a specific activity by race. Instead, disparities in affect are driven by differences in time use. We will next use AHTUS to estimates how compositional changes in patterns of time use by race from 1965 to 2012 have patterned daily affect over this period.

Conclusions: Preliminary analyses suggest that diminishing time spent in unpleasant activities may be a promising method for promoting equity in the quality of daily life. Subsequent analyses will situate these disparities historically, identifying the changing nature of historic inequities.

Xboxes and Ex-workers? Electronics and Labor Supply of Young Adults in the U.S.

Author: Gray Kimbrough

One popular hypothesis holds that advances in computing and video game technology over the last decade led young adult men to reduce their working hours. I examine American Time Use Survey data in detail, documenting the extent of the increase in gaming. I note that increasing gaming time is offset by decreasing time spent watching television, movies, and streaming video. I find that the Aguiar et al. model and empirical strategy predict increases in labor supply due to negative technology shocks in television and streaming video, which are both implausible given the rise of streaming technology over this period and greater in magnitude than the predicted reductions associated with gaming. Moreover, I find that the observed trend is consistent with an alternative explanation that a shift in social norms rendered playing video games more acceptable at later ages, particularly for non-employed men. The increase in gaming is concentrated among men living with parents, and is not uniform for all ages of young adults. Also, men exiting the work force do not exhibit significantly increased preferences for gaming leisure. Overall, the evidence suggests that while young men have increased the amount of time they spend gaming over the past decade and a half, their decreasing levels of employment and labor force participation are more likely to have resulted from changes in labor demand.

GENDER INEQUALITIES IN TIME USE OF INFORMAL SECTOR WORKERS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN: A CASE STUDY OF TIRUPUR CITY, TAMIL NADU IN INDIA

Author: Nirmala Velan

Contributing author(s): Vijay P., Freelance Researcher, Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, India; and Vasant Myil Mohan, Deputy Branch Head, Union Bank of India, 17 Mill Road, Coimbatore - 641001, India. and V.M. Mohan

The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has had drastic effects on the world economies, both at the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels, in terms of decreased economic growth, unemployment and lack of income, besides ban on mobility and social contacts. This had unequal gender effects on the labour market and households. Women being largely concentrated in the informal sector with no social or job securities, like textiles and services (food, hospitality, retail, health and teaching) that often involve direct contact with the customers, they have been one of the worst affected. In the light of these developments, the present study attempts to assess the impact of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on gender inequality in time use pattern of informal sector workers engaged in the textiles industry in Tirupur city, Tamil Nadu of India. It also examines the coping mechanisms adopted by the households during lockdown period, besides surveying the incidence of domestic violence if any on the women.

The findings reveal rampant joblessness and economic hardships among the textiles industry workers of the Tirupur city during the pandemic. As compared to the males, the intensity of female unpaid care work and domestic chores like cooking, fetching water, washing, child care and caring for the ill increased. Whereas, the males’ entertainment and sleep time increased. Due to lack of income, the households had to fall back on past savings, borrowings, pledging valuables, besides depending on government supply of free rations, food items supplied by the local politicians, NGOs and philanthropists. The strict implementation of lockdown restricting social movements and the illness or death of family member, close relatives or friends whose funerals they were unable to attend, added to the mental and emotional stress of the respondents, resulting in increased abuses like alcoholism and domestic violence. The respondents felt that the government should have given the public time to be prepared for the complete lockdown, besides providing them with financial help to meet their daily expenses. The study also highlights the need for the government to take into consideration the inequalities in unpaid work and frame gender sensitive policies to deal with the pandemic crisis.

Perceived stress in daily activities and its prospective links with health: Linkages from adolescence to early adulthood

Author: Sarah James

Context: Life experiences and health outcomes are presumed to be linked via the stress process. Though we have made good progress on identifying the prevalence of exposure to events or situations that are likely to be stressful, simply being exposed to a stressor is not sufficient to cause a health outcome. The stressor must also be psychologically perceived as a stressor by the individual before it can produce physiological stress in the body that contributes to health outcomes. There is little research on perceived stressors, however, and even less research captures low-level, chronic stress across a wide range of daily activities (not only those preselected by researchers). 

Objective: I fill this gap by using time use affect data (emotions during a given activity) to identify an individual’s level of stress in daily activities, then testing how this affective stress is prospectively linked with health outcomes over the following ten years. I specifically focus on the adolescence-to-adulthood transition, a key developmental period for establishing adult health.

Methods: This project uses two datasets to produce prospective estimates of these associations in the United States.

I estimate the stressful of an activity using nationally representative data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) Well-Being Module (2010, 2012, and 2013). Respondents reported their emotions during diary activities. I use data from respondents ages 15 to 19 to create age-sex-race specific estimates of the u-index, a summary of the activity’s unpleasantness.

I merge these estimates to the time diaries of 15-to-19-year-olds collected as a part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement (PSID-CDS) between 2002 and 2014, matching respondents’ age, sex, and race. Finally, I test how the share of time spent in stressful activities predict health in subsequent study waves over the following four to ten years. 

Results: Results are pending. I am in the process of obtaining PSID data and anticipate receiving it in May 2022, with analyses to be completed in early summer.

Conclusions: This study has the potential to identify novel linkages between stress and health using a new method of linking time diary data across studies. 

TIME USE PATTERN OF FISHERMEN DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN MALAPPURAM DISTRICT OF KERALA, INDIA

Author: Nirmala Velan

Contributing author(s): V. Nirmala, Professor of Economics, Pondicherry University, Puducherry - 605014. India.

The global pandemic Covid-19 resulted in complete lockdown of the harbours and landing centers during the pandemic that impacted fish production, distribution and marketing, seed supply, and seafood exports, which affected the livelihood and day-to-day earnings of fisher-folk households in Kerala, India. It also changed the household time use pattern of the married couple within the household. In this context, the paper proposes to examine: i) the impact of the pandemic lockdown on the livelihood of fishermen households in Kerala; ii) to over-view the gender-wise time use pattern of the fishermen couple; and iii) the coping strategy of the household during the Covid 19 lockdown.  The study would be based on primary data collected from a sample of 150 marine fishermen households in Malappuram and Kozhikode districts of Kerala during February-April 2021. The study would use simple statistical tools like percentage, ratios, t-test and graphs.

Preliminary survey revealed that during the phase-1 lockdown, primary fishing, allied fishing activities and fish vending was nil. But by early April 2020, the Kerala government permitted small scale fishing fleets compatible with pandemic prevention measures to operate. Consequently, the fishing livelihood activities gradually commenced reviving at a slow pace. As regards time use, it was interesting to find husbands’ involvement in domestic cooking and cleaning activities. Besides, their entertainment and sleep time considerably increased. As a consequence of work sharing by the husband, wives’ cooking and cleaning time marginally declined, while their entertainment and sleep time also increased. The major household coping strategies during the lockdown involved borrowing from relatives and friends, besides availing the public distribution system services. Post April 2020 the fishing relaxation benefitted the small scale fishermen households. The role of governmental and non-governmental institutions has been pivotal in facilitating fishing activities after the ease of lockdown restrictions. The fishing operations were institutionalized by co-management actors with greater control of government institutions in prior price fixing and facilitating fish sales through cooperatives. It is foreseen that the experience gained during the initial lockdown period would act as valuable inputs to streamline the fish marketing system and the fisher-folks’ wellbeing in general.

Reevaluation of social protection needs of children and seniors : A gender analysis of unpaid care work according level of poverty

Author: Edmée Marthe Edmée Marthe Yakhou NDOYE

Contributing author(s): Latif Dramani

The analysis of economic and social welfare in most developing countries does not take into account the contribution of unpaid domestic care work, whose important role in the reproduction of human capital has been widely debated.  This paper proposes to measure the magnitude of such a contribution to well-being as well as its variability by gender and poverty level. To this end, the paper uses the method of national transfer accounts and national time transfer accounts to estimate the need for social protection of the young and the elderly and to assess the contribution of men and women according to their poverty level.

Results from the 2018 Senegal Harmonized Survey on Household Living Conditions show that unpaid domestic care is a significant part of the need for social protection in youth and old age in Senegal. Women are the main providers and disparities are observed between poor and non-poor women.

These results argue in favor of better taking into account of unpaid domestic work in the development of social protection policies for youth, seniors and women.

Keywords : Unpaid care, sociale protection, gender, poverty, Sénégal

JEL Code : D19, I131, J16, P46

Evaluation of social protection needs of children and seniors : A gender analysis of unpaid care work according level of poverty

Author: Latif DRAMANI

Contributing author(s): Edmee Marthe Ndoye

The analysis of economic and social welfare in most developing countries does not take into account the contribution of unpaid domestic care work, whose important role in the reproduction of human capital has been widely debated.  This paper proposes to measure the magnitude of such a contribution to well-being as well as its variability by gender and poverty level. To this end, the paper uses the method of national transfer accounts and national time transfer accounts to estimate the need for social protection of the young and the elderly and to assess the contribution of men and women according to their poverty level.

Results from the 2018 Senegal Harmonized Survey on Household Living Conditions show that unpaid domestic care is a significant part of the need for social protection in youth and old age in Senegal. Women are the main providers and disparities are observed between poor and non-poor women.

These results argue in favor of better taking into account of unpaid domestic work in the development of social protection policies for youth, seniors and women.

Understanding the root of gender inequalities in education : Insights from time spent in unpaid care work in Senegal

Author: Latif DRAMANI

Contributing author(s): Sam Agbahoungba

The issue of gender inequality has been the subject of deep reflection in recent decades, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the situation remains a matter of concern. This paper aims to understand the sources of gender inequalities in education in Senegal by focusing on unpaid domestic work time. To do so, we exploited data from Senegal's Harmonized Household Living Conditions Survey (EHCVM 2018) to analyze changes in domestic work time by gender. Then, we defined a Probit model of school attendance and academic performance that are explained by several other explanatory variables including time spent on domestic work.

The results show that the amount of time girls spend on housework is greater than that of boys. The amount of time girls and boys spend on housework is an explanatory factor for gender disparities (to the disadvantage of girls) in both school attendance and academic performance in Senegalese education. In terms of policy implications, promoting equal access to education and accelerating women's empowerment will require the implementation of gender-sensitive and socio-culturally specific policies that minimize the amount of time spent on domestic work by school-age girls. This could be done using the market for the performance of domestic work.

TIME USE PATTERN OF FISHERMEN DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN MALAPPURAM DISTRICT OF KERALA, INDIA.

Author: Nirmala Velan

Contributing author(s): V. Nirmala

The global pandemic Covid-19 resulted in complete lockdown of the harbours and landing centers during the pandemic that impacted fish production, distribution and marketing, seed supply, and seafood exports, which affected the livelihood and day-to-day earnings of fisher-folk households in Kerala, India. It also changed the household time use pattern of the married couple within the household. In this context, the paper proposes to examine: i) the impact of the pandemic lockdown on the livelihood of fishermen households in Kerala; ii) to over-view the gender-wise time use pattern of the fishermen couple; and iii) the coping strategy of the household during the Covid 19 lockdown.  The study would be based on primary data collected from a sample of 150 marine fishermen households in Malappuram and Kozhikode districts of Kerala during February-April 2021. The study would use simple statistical tools like percentage, ratios, t-test and graphs.

Preliminary survey revealed that during the phase-1 lockdown, primary fishing, allied fishing activities and fish vending was nil. But by early April 2020, the Kerala government permitted small scale fishing fleets compatible with pandemic prevention measures to operate. Consequently, the fishing livelihood activities gradually commenced reviving at a slow pace. As regards time use, it was interesting to find husbands’ involvement in domestic cooking and cleaning activities. Besides, their entertainment and sleep time considerably increased. As a consequence of work sharing by the husband, wives’ cooking and cleaning time marginally declined, while their entertainment and sleep time also increased. The major household coping strategies during the lockdown involved borrowing from relatives and friends, besides availing the public distribution system services. Post April 2020 the fishing relaxation benefitted the small scale fishermen households. The role of governmental and non-governmental institutions has been pivotal in facilitating fishing activities after the ease of lockdown restrictions. The fishing operations were institutionalized by co-management actors with greater control of government institutions in prior price fixing and facilitating fish sales through cooperatives. It is foreseen that the experience gained during the initial lockdown period would act as valuable inputs to streamline the fish marketing system and the fisher-folks’ wellbeing in general.

Wellbeing impact of a policy response to a large-scale shock

Author: Francesca Foliano

Contributing author(s): Almudena Sevilla, Valentina Tonei

Containment policies have been at the centre of the political debate during the Covid-19 pandemic, due to concerns about the potential negative externalities on the economy and on individuals’ well-being. While it is undeniable that measures restricting mobility have saved lives (Flaxman et al, 2020; Dehning al. 2020), there is also increasing evidence of their negative impact on mental health and well-being (Adams-Prassl et al. 2020; Andrew et al. 2020). 

In this paper we study gender differences in well-being trajectories during the pandemic and we explore gender-specific mechanisms behind the differential negative impact of lockdown measures.

We use 24h-diary data on a representative survey collected via a new online low-respondent-burden time use diary instrument (the Click and Drag Diary Instrument, CaDDI).[1] Every 10 minutes during the day respondents recorded detailed information on how individuals spend their time, who they spent time with, as well as instantaneous enjoyment levels experienced in each activity (see Kahneman et al. 2004). The diary was accompanied by an individual questionnaire containing socio-economic information as well as an individual’s life satisfaction (subjective well-being) with specific aspects of life, such as health and income. 

We exploit the staggered introduction and lifting of lockdown restrictions with different stringency levels between March 2020 and September 2021 in the United Kingdom. We disentangle the impact of the policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic on wellbeing by adopting an event-study approach while controlling for detailed socio-economic characteristics and the region-specific level of infection cases and deaths. We then analyse time diary data to explore changes in time allocation and activity-specific preferences by gender over key stages of the pandemic.  

We find gender differences in the well-being impact of lockdown restrictions, with women, and in particular mothers, experiencing a drop in their well-being that is twice that of men. Evidence from time diaries shows that containment policies significantly limit social life of both men and women. However, women suffered more from social isolation, as they have a stronger preference for spending time with non-household members (friends and co-workers) than men. 

By investigating the mechanisms behind the effect of COVID-related policy on individual wellbeing, we contribute to the economic literature analysing the well-being impact of natural events and macroeconomic shocks and how it varies by gender (e.g. Clark and Osvald 1994; Danzer and Danzer 2016; Clark et al. 2020; Frijters et al. 2021). Compared to men the psychological wellbeing of women is more likely to be affected by disastrous events (Chang et al. 2013; Dagher et al. 2015) and this would include the Covid-19 pandemic (Etheridge and Spantig, 2020; Oreffice and Quintana-Domeque, 2021). 

A proposed explanation for these findings is that women tend to be more responsive to increased uncertainty and risk perceptions than men (Croson and Gneezy, 2009; Galasso et al. 2021). Instead, we present evidence that the differences in wellbeing changes between men and women are driven by differences in preferences for how they spend their time. 

[1] Because of the paucity of real-time representative data, particularly at the start of the pandemic, social scientists have often relied on commercially-run panels to understand the outcomes of the COVID crises, due to their rapid response times (Adams-Prassl et al. 2020; Andrew et al. 2020). The CaDDI sample merits some claim to representativeness as it is based on nationally representative quotas for age-group, sex, region and social group in 2016.

Who does the paperwork? On the division of administrative tasks in the household

Author: Dennis Becker

Contributing author(s): Miriam Beblo

We examine whether the division of administrative tasks in the household corresponds to relative opportunity costs, skills, or gender. The LevelOne study on the literacy of the adult German-speaking population, LEO, provides standardized measures for reading and writing competence and allows us to derive a measure of financial competence. Consistent with the economic theory of identity, our results imply that the allocation of administrative tasks in the household is predominantly driven by gender stereotypes and to a lesser extent by opportunity costs or bargaining power arguments. Our results also indicate a link between the division of tasks and financial competence, but not literacy, with more competent individuals taking responsibility for administrative tasks more frequently on average.

Time-Use Pattern of Industrial Workers during the Outbreak of Covid-19 in the Union Territory of Puducherry, India.

Author: Arumugam Sankaran

Contributing author(s): Dr. A. Sankaran

Industrial development is a sine-qua-non for achieving a paramount socio-economic development in any nation. A famous Nobel laureate Simon Kuznets (1966) mentioned that in the developmental journey of both developed and developing countries, industrial development played a remarkable role. Still few nations relay upon industrial development due to its capacity to reduce the long-bending socio-economic problems, such as deep-rooted poverty, unemployment, lackadaisical utilization of endowed resources, etc. Though industrial development is a driving force of development, it is vulnerable to both internal and external shocks. The recent outbreak of Covid-19 is one such pressing issue, which created a repercussion effect in more or less all sub-sectors of the economy. Though a good number of studies have been investigated the impacts of the pandemic on different aspects of the business arena, a scientific research on the impact of Covid-19 on the time-use pattern of industrial workers has not been conducted. The existence of lacuna in the growing body of literature, and the lack of knowledge dissemination among academicians, researchers, bureaucrats and policy makers about the effects of Covid-19 on the time-use of industrial workers call for a scientific research.  Hence, the present study is an attempt to address the impact of Covid-19 on time-use pattern of industrial workers in Puducherry, India. The research data will be collected from 150 sample respondents (industrial workers) in the Union Territory of Puducherry by applying convenient sampling method. Further, secondary data will also be used. It is proposed to process the survey data by employing appropriate statistical/econometric tools. Hence, the outcome of the research will significantly contribute to the policy makers, industrial workers and industrialists.

Within household loneliness and time use among older Chinese adults in the Toronto area

Author: Amber DeJohn

Contributing author(s): Michael Widener, Bochu Liu, Xinlin Ma, Zhilin Liu

A key determinant for social isolation and loneliness is whether an individual lives with a spouse or long-term partner (Chai & Margolis, 2020; Cornwell & Waite, 2009; Klinenberg, 2016). Because loneliness and social isolation are generally more severe in individuals living alone, these populations alone are often studied (Austin et al., 2016; Chai & Margolis, 2020; Fingerman et al., 2020; Klinenberg, 2016). Loneliness within married older couples has been studied in relation to subjective appraisals of the marital relationship (Ayalon et al., 2013; Stokes, 2017) and spousal support (Saenz, 2021). Few studies have used within household time use data to understand the friction between time spent together and feelings of loneliness, despite time use approaches being adopted for other studies of loneliness in older adults (McKenna et al., 2007; Steptoe & Fancourt, 2019). During the coronavirus pandemic, household time use dynamics may be especially important as older adults change their daily routines to fit public health guidelines. This study fills a gap in the social isolation and loneliness literature by employing within-household time use diaries, collected from older, Chinese couples during transitioning lockdown conditions in Toronto in 2021. We employ an optimal matching and sequential clustering approach to group participants into time use clusters. We then use these clusters to obtain descriptive information and construct a model detailing how feelings of loneliness vary, and whether this variation is connected to differences in time use patterns and journeys out of the home. These clusters, along with descriptive info and logistic model results, provide insight into how older Chinese couples in the Toronto area spent their time during shifting lockdown conditions, and whether couples with more harmonious time use schedules had differing levels of loneliness. 

Differences in Subjective Well-Being During Time Alone and with Others by Race and Gender

Author: Liana Sayer

Contributing author(s): Kelsey Drotning, Sarah M. Flood

Recent research highlights how the choice to be alone or with others benefits well-being (Uziel and Schmidt-Barad 2022). This research is particularly salient because of ways COVID-19 public health guidelines have restricted routine interactions with others. The pandemic also highlighted disparities in individual choice and control over who they spend their time that result from role constraints and structural inequality (Roxburgh 2006; Kwate 2017; Vagni 2020). Our paper asks, how does subjective well-being vary by whom people spend time with and by the structural and role constraints they navigate? Parents and couples report greater happiness, meaning, and less stress when they are with their partner or children, but we know less about how spending time alone or with non-family contributes to subjective well-being. We use time diary and momentary emotion data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) Well-Being Module fielded in 2010, 2012, and 2013 to examine subjective well-being during time spent alone, with family, and with non-family, focusing on variation by gender and race and ethnicity. We find that men, Black people, and older adults spend more time alone whereas women, Hispanic people, and younger people spend more time with family. Additionally, people are happier and less stressed when they are with family than with non-family. Our findings suggest that spending time with family has positive effects on well-being, but opportunity to spend time with family is not equally distributed across racial and gender groups. It is likely the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted regular social interaction patterns, has only compounded these disparities.

Time use diaries and the wellbeing “dashboard”: Production plus Process Accounts

Author: Jonathan Gershuny

There are two fundamentally different sorts of National Accounts.   “Dual entry” accounts document how the different sorts of production across the society balance the different sorts of consumption. The value of production is identical to the value of consumption.  “Single-entry” accounts concern the ways that each of the various things that members of the society do—work or consumption—satisfy individual requirements and collective needs.  Both sorts of account can be constituted directly out of time-use diary data.

The 2009 “Stiglitz Commission” Report established the need to move forward from money-based production to a focus on well-being.  But it fails to provide a view of how to integrate time-use statistics into a consistent and comprehensive “dashboard” of indicators of social and economic wellbeing 

This presentation provides such a view.  It shows: (1) how dual entry accounts may be extended to provide a demonstrably exhaustive summary of all economic activity.  However, (2) such “complete” accounts nevertheless exclude the direct consequences of paid and unpaid production itself, both on the wellbeing of workers and on the survival of the society—implying the need for additional “process” accounts proposed by Juster and Stafford in their 1985 book.  (3) These single entry process accounts provide both estimates of individual requirements (for health, subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction) and also the provision for collective needs (for human justice and fairness, sustainability of styles of life, and protection and respect for other species). 

Unequal Burdens? Intersectional Gender and Class Inequality in Housework and Childcare Time during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author: Haoming Song

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically reshaped ordinary family lives. Building upon a burgeoning literature on the pandemic’s economic and social consequences, the current study examines changing inequality in unpaid labor time in the United States. It answers an important question: during the pandemic, how have inequalities in housework and childcare time changed at the intersection of gender and class, i.e., are they exacerbated, stayed unchanged, or shrunk? The main contributions are threefold: first, it utilizes large-scale, nationally representative diary data to provide a detailed comparison of time use before and during the pandemic; second, prior studies have often focused on either housework or childcare time while this study studies both and depicts more nuanced activities; third, it surpasses a fixation on either gender or class inequality in existing studies to study time inequality by both lines through an explicit intersectional lens. Using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) 2019-2020 data collected from individuals in different-sex dual-earner couples, the study finds that, on average, there was an increase in both absolute housework and childcare time during the pandemic. However, the added time burdens were shared unequally by gender and class groups. Between-group inequalities in housework time was exacerbated, mostly due to increased routine labor among less educated women. To the contrary, there was a suggestively shrinking time inequality in childcare, mostly resulting from an increased participation of primary childcare among less educated men. Overall, this study provides timely and important evidence on changing unpaid labor time during the pandemic and advances a rigorous quantitative scholarship on intersectionality.

The moral economy of familial care labor: Valuing unpaid work through the demographic change in Thailand

Author: MinhTam Minh Tam Bui

Care is a common term embedded with moral meanings from the notions of duty and love (Esquivel, 2014; Folbre, 2012) and the care work is very often associated with women, particularly in the familial care context. The recent Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the need for care provided by informal caregivers to their vulnerable family members including children and the sick, the elderly. Even in the normal time, co-residing of more than two generations in the same roof places a more critical importance of care and its time allocation. How the family distributes its resources among members and assures their well-being has been the salience of intergenerational transfers not only for the family but also for the broader issues of social policy, social inequality (Kohli & Künemund, 2003).

This study explore the changes in the distribution of worktime and caretime for different family members of Thai women and men across a 15-year period 2001-2015 along with the strong structural economic tranformations and a significant demographic change toward an aging society. The study examines a unique interwining of the marketization of unpaid care through extensive economic transformations, labor markets and demographic swifts with delayed marriage, low fertility and fast aging socierty in Thailand (Peek et al., 2015).  Those changes haven been occuring amid the cultural ties, social norms and the moral economy of kin which are still firm in the Thai socierty, dignifying receipcocity and altruism (Knodel et al., 2013; Knodel et al., 2018; Netiparatanakul, 2020). We use mirco-level data of nationally representaive timeuse surveys linked with labor forces surveys in four time periods 2001, 2004, 2009, 2014/15 of Thailand to delve into those transformative and sluggish processes by valuing the unpaid childcare and adult care labor across the time using replacement and opportunity cost valuation methods (Suh & Folbre, 2016). Those changes are then contrasted with a unstable labor force participation trend and supply of Thai women at the same period to draw some policy agendas and institutional responses toward the recognition of unpaid care before it can be reduced and redistributed at multiple level following the 3R model (Elson, 2017) and care diamond framework (Razavi, 2007).        

Time Poverty and Use of Free Time: The Importance of Weekend Days

Author: STELLA CHATZITHEOCHARI

Recent decades have witnessed an increasing preoccupation with the phenomenon of time poverty and its consequences for individual and societal wellbeing. However, despite the steady growth of time-use research, only a few studies have attempted to formally measure time poverty and explore its associations with different discretionary activities. This study analyses data from the UK 2015 Time Use Survey to further understanding surrounding the behavioural implications of being “time poor”. I advance a novel typology of time poverty status, moving away from the problematic assumption of neutrality of free time units that characterises earlier work in the field. Results show that being “time poor” on weekdays has no implications for engagement with physical activity, entertainment, and socialising on a typical week. In contrast, weekend time poverty is associated with a higher probability of non-participation in these activities, with clear implications for the measurement and conceptual understanding of time poverty. 

Time Together and Time Apart: A New Look at Couple Time

Author: STELLA CHATZITHEOCHARI

Contributing author(s): Killian Mullan

This paper examines changes in couple time across the life-course. Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in couple time and its association with work and family constraints. However, the majority of existing work has relied on individual-level data of low reliability that only allow the examination of a unidimensional measure of togetherness. Drawing on nationally representative data from matched couples in the 2000 and 2015 UK Time Use Surveys, we construct a set of novel measures that capture varying levels of togetherness. We specifically focus on the time partners spend at different locations, time together at home, as well as the time when both partners are at home but report being alone (alone-together). We then examine the extent to which changes in togetherness can be explained by changes in work and family circumstances, lifestyle choices, and technological change. 

Determinantes of unpaid household labor and gender inequalities in Brazil

Author: Pinheiro Luana

Contributing author(s): Joana Simões de Melo Costa, Marcelo Medeiros, Ana Luiza Neves de H. Barbosa

We examine the determinants of unpaid household labor in Brazil in 2019 using a large household survey dataset (PNAD). We found that, in line with studies in other countries, gender is the main determinant of involvement in unpaid work. Women have an average unpaid household work shift of almost 22 hours per week, twice larger than men's. In a couple, being a woman adds 11 hours of unpaid work per week, even after controlling for other characteristics. After controlling for several variables, we also found limited support to the assumptions of the conventional bargain theory: the unpaid work of men is less responsive to individual and family characteristics than that of women, and there is evidence of 'gender display' behavior when women have more bargaining power than men (all gender roles being reinforced ,in this case). Other factors, such as time availability, position in the life course, relative resources bargain or macro-level factors (non–individual characteristics) are relevant but have less explanatory power. In particular, we found that: young men tend to work slightly more, and more education reduces worked hours for women and increases them for men, both possibly indicating generational and cultural changes on gender norms; women are much more affected by the presence of children or persons aged 80 and above than men, and an additional adult male in the family increases the unpaid work shift of women without altering that of men, two signs that besides unpaid work being unequally distributed when couples are formed, new family members aggravate intra-family inequalities. We also found a relevant interaction between gender and class: the higher the income of a woman, the lower the time spent in reproductive work, but results are less robust for men, potentially indicating that richer families can hire domestic workers. For women, race plays no important role in determining the time spent in unpaid work, but for men it does, with black men working slightly more than their white counterparts. In essence, most of our results confirm what previous studies have found, but with some particularities and different quantitative impacts.

Intertemporal relationships in time-use and enjoyment

Author: Christopher Payne

Enjoyment-weighted National Time Accounts (NTAs) are a welfare-focussed alternative to National Income Accounts. However, drivers of enjoyment are currently poorly understood, increasing potential for ineffective NTA-based policy interventions. To resolve the issue, we challenge the assertion that enjoyment is truly independent of past events by analysing the 2014/15 UK Time-use Survey using Ordinary Least Squares Regression to evaluate intertemporal relationships between time-use activities, past and present enjoyment. Results show intemporal relationships between past and present enjoyment exist, differ across generations and interact with different time-use activities. Therefore, policy interventions should recognise the aggregate enjoyment maybe linked to past events.

Is family meal time in decline?

Author: Julie Verbeylen

Contributing author(s): Ignace Glorieux

Family time has gained much symbolic meaning in western societies since the industrialization, especially middle-class families began to attach growing importance to the idea of the family and the home. Shared time stimulates cohesion among the family members, and for parents it is also a convenient way to teach their children appropriate values and attitudes. However, family time seems to be under pressure because of changing structures of work and the growing complexity of family life. We use time use data from the Belgian Time Use Surveys of 1999, 2005 and 2013, collected on household level, to assess the recent evolution in family time by focusing on shared meal time between children and parents. Sharing meals is one of the most popular family activities and considered a cornerstone of family life. In this paper, we study on possible changes in the timing and duration of family meal time in Belgium between 1999 and 2013. 

Montreal Community supported agriculture (CSA) consumers: time use strategies and perceptions

Author: Nathalie Nahas

Contributing author(s): Ugo Lachapelle, PhD, professor of Urban Studies, UQÀM

Community supported agriculture (CSA) groups are initiatives in which consumers establish a partnership with a local farmer by committing to purchase a share of the harvest for a specified period. Contrary to classic grocery shopping, consumers are required to pick up food baskets at a set day and time on a regular basis. During the summer of 2020, semi-structured interviews on the consumption practices and travel patterns of 16 Montreal-based users of 10 of the farms of the Family Farmers Network were conducted. The goal was to understand how CSA shaped their food consumption and daily mobility. In this presentation, we will approach CSA participants’ perceived changes in time use linked with the adoption of the basket. This reflection matters given that the adoption of such practices is qualified as environmentally responsible.

Among our findings, participants mention that having a specific time to collect the basket may conflict or be complicated by structuring activities of daily life, such as work. Both benefits and challenges to having flexible working hours are mentioned, as is the importance of stable work schedules that enable timely pickups. Regarding pickup, users mention shorter time spent in travel and at the pickup sites in comparison to their usual grocery shopping. This is due to the geographic proximity of CSA pickups, and the time saving related to not perusing store aisles and receiving a set basket. We will characterize how pickup trips and additional food shopping scheduling have time use implications. CSA users may also be more constrained because they need to spend more time cooking. This, however, is perceived differently depending on users. Some were already used to cooking “from scratch”. Those who feel that managing the basket is more time-consuming attribute this to the processing and preparation work in the kitchen and to the time spent thinking and organizing the household’s meals. Finally, we observed that CSA use is incorporated into various food shopping styles that are more or less focused on proximity and car use. We will present a typology of profiles that emerge which also differ in their associated perceptions of time use.

Of time use, perceived passage of time and time pressure

Author: Jiri Zuzanek

          Of time use, perceived passage of time and time pressure

          Popular literature abounds with statements that accelerated rhythms of modern life are taxing us emotionally (Gleick, 1979; Honoré, 2004; Menzies, 2005). “When things happen too fast, Milan Kundera wrote, nobody can be certain about anything at all, not even about himself”.  The coronavirus pandemic, which dramatically affected the rhythms of daily life and the passage of time for most of us, makes this issue particularly interesting.                                                                                                                                       The proposed paper will examine relationships between time use, perceived time passage (how fast time is running), feelings of time pressure and respondents’ subjective well-being.                                                                                                                                         Data used in the paper will be taken from Canada’s 2010 and 2015 General Social Surveys and from the 2003 Experience sampling survey of time use and well being conducted, under the direction of the author, in 2003 in the Kitchener-Waterloo and Larger Metropolitan Toronto areas of Ontario (n= 219 respondents; 10,453 beep-observations).                                                                                                                                             Analyses of 2003 ESM data show that when time was passing relatively slowly (4 or less on a 10-point time passage scale) in 29.7% instances respondents reported feeling happy (affect). When time was perceived as running fast (8 to 10 on the time passage scale), respondents reported that they felt happy in 51.3 % instances. In other words, more respondents felt happy when time was running fast than when it was running slow.                                                                                                                         So, how valid is the widely shared belief that the accelerated rhythms of modern life are taxing us emotionally?                                                                                                                Will slowing down make us happier?  What is the actual relationship between the speed of time passage and happiness?                                                                                                                                    As in many other instances, answers to serious social concerns are usually more complicated than suggested by the well-meaning journalists.                                                            The following paper will examine factors that contribute to the respondents’ apparent enjoyment of the fast-running episodes, as well as factors that justify our intuitive fears of the accelerated rhythms of modern life.                                                                                                                      Particular attention in the paper will be paid to the difference between the notion of time passage (perception of how fast or slowly time is flowing) and of time pressure (feeling of being pressed to do things on time, or faster).                                                                                                                                                    In the end, an argument will be made that what really matters in our life, is not so much the speed of time passage as the sense of time pressure and the failing rhythms of social life.

Tracing the feeling of home to daily digital and exercising routines during the Covid-19 pandemic

Author: Pablo Garcia de Paredes

After two years of Pandemic, changes in our daily routines have strained our definitions of “home”. We used to “feel at home” through a variety of residential rituals that included screen time for leisure and exercising. Yet telework, the presence of children full-time at the residence and available space have made certain activities harder to fulfill.

Have households with various family compositions and dwelling sizes adapted their time use practices regarding screen time for leisure and exercising differently? What adaptation strategies can be identified? If a difference exists, has it impacted wellbeing?

Using a longitudinal survey of 3086 respondents (MAVIPAN) from the province of Quebec focused on wellbeing and daily activities, we plan to perform ANOVA tests and shed light into time use adaptations connected to dwelling size and family types.

Our preliminary association tests (Kramer’s V) show that dwelling size and available urban infrastructure could have moderated adaptations for households with small children and groups of young people who were flat-sharing at the time of confinement, which could have negative long-term impacts. Our results will contribute to the literature explaining how humans create a feeling of "home", through daily routines and how disruptions in time use affect well-being.

Dual-earner couples’ synchronized time and the level of satisfaction in a family domain

Author: Hyejoong Kim

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how dual-earner couples spend time together in the family domain and how their time use is related to their satisfaction level of time. Couples' time use reflects couples' agreement and negotiation in family life, sometimes representing gender equality norms in their daily life. When dual-earner couples return home from work, they sometimes spend time together doing housework or having emotional intimacy. The existing research, however, argues that there are gender differences in time use even among the dual-earner couples who are both engaged in paid work and family life. The level of gender equality is demonstrated not only in the fairness in the labor market but also in the fairness in the family domain, and even in synchronized time. This paper, therefore, raises the following research questions: 1) Other than paid jobs, what activities do dual-earner couples synchronize and desynchronize in a family domain? 2) Does the synchronized activity influence the level of satisfaction? 3) Is the level of satisfaction in each activity moderated by gender? 

For the analysis, this research uses the Korea Time Use Survey 2019, which was conducted by Korea Statistics Office. A total of 1,608 dual-earner couples with children under 10 years old are selected for the analysis. The findings from this research are expected to be as follows. First, dual-earner couples prefer to share their household duties separately in most activities for the sake of time-saving but want to synchronize some activities such as leisure so they can spend time together and increase intimacy. Second, some synchronized activities are related to the satisfaction level of time use. For example, out of child care activities, both husbands and wives have a high level of satisfaction when they synchronize playing time with children while they prefer to desynchronize the pick-up duty of children. In sum, dual-earner couples’ time synchronization not only represents the time use strategy of a couple but also shows that synchronization is related to the level of satisfaction in each activity. Yet, the level of satisfaction may differ by gender in each activity and a policy to raise gender equality in a family must be drawn in order to make a work-life balance between husbands and wives of a dual-earner couple to an equivalent level. 

Heterogeneous factors explaining the time spent in unpaid care work in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence and comparative analysis from Benin and Mali

Author: Sam Agbahoungba

Contributing author(s): Latif Dramani

The main objective of this paper is to examine factors that explain the level of time spent in unpaid care works in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on Benin and Mali. To achieve it, a nonlinear method has been specified over data sourced from the harmonized survey on living conditions (EHCVM 2018). The primary results showcase that the time spent in unpaid care works is very sensitive to social and demographic factors namely household size, number of dependent people, culture, etc. Moreover, employment and marital status play a critical role in time devoted to unpaid care works. These fundings showcase the extent to which the unpaid care works is highly tied to socio-anthropologic values of people and the demographic factors

Validity challenges in self-administered time-diary research. Identification of four changes and their consequences for (the measurement of) measurement errors.

Author: Petrus te Braak

Since 2008, there has been a rise in self-administered online time-diary research. This is a substantial methodological change in a field that previously relied mainly on paper or telephone time-diaries, which were often collected and completed with the assistance of interviewers. In this presentation, I will describe specifically how the development from paper and telephone time-diary methods towards self-administered online time-diary methodology affects both the way in which measurement error is assessed and the validity of time-use parameters. Specifically, I will identify four crucial differences that are directly related to the evolution towards self-administered online time-diary research and potentially lead to both errors of observation and non-observation, affecting the internal and external validity. Firstly, the choice of an online survey design leads to certain additional requirements for respondents to participate effectively in the survey. Secondly, the role of the interviewer has changed. In telephone and paper time-diaries, the interviewer was present to a greater or lesser extent during the fieldwork, whereas he/she is largely to completely absent in self-administered online time-diary methodology. Thirdly, there is the social and technical evolution in which the importance, availability and use of smartphones at all times has increased, which also has consequences for the organisation of time-diary research, in which respondents can increasingly participate in time-diary research at all times. Lastly, online registration by respondents provides researchers with much more accurate data on the participation of respondents in time-diary studies. Such information allows us to be much more specific about potential consequences of respondent behaviour, such as response, retention during the study, the mode of participation, etc, affecting the potential techniques in which measurement error and its consequences for both internal and external validity can be investigated. The presentation concludes with a discussion of additional implications for both the assessment of validity as well as the validity of self-administered online time-diaries itself.

Developing new guidance on modular time-use measurement: Application to Labour Force Surveys in LMICs

Author: Samantha Watson

Context: In this session, we present findings from an ongoing pilot project led by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), with Data 2X support. The study, titled: “Closing the gender data gap on unpaid care and domestic work”, is tasked with producing light time-use modules for attachment to national Labour Force Surveys (LFS) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The project contributes to wider efforts to support the production of national statistics on unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW). It is informed by parallel international efforts to harmonise time use measurement, including the work of the UNSD coordinated Expert Group on Innovative and Effective ways to collect Time-Use Statistics to update existing international guidance.

Objectives: Modular time-use measurement is an emerging field in LMICs. This project’s focus is on the development of a rigorous evidence base to inform module design and to guide national implementation/adaptation at scale. The project contributes to the longer-term objective of mainstreaming production of accurate, timely, and cost-effective statistics on UCDW. The integration of time use measurement within LFS lays the ground for a much fuller treatment of gender-based differences and inequities in work, employment and labour statistics, while also suppurting a fuller analysis of the contribution of unpaid work to national economies. 

Methods: This mixed-methods, multi-country pilot project combined intensive qualitative research and randomised survey experiments. Two module formats, a light, hybrid diary and a stylised question listing were developed. The separate study phases were designed to inform and evaluate priority aspects of the module design, the enumerator guidelines, and broader features of sample design and fielding.

Results and conclusions: We present key findings related to construct validity, survey fielding and operations, and the statistical performance and concordance of alternative module designs under an experimental study design. We discuss how the findings have informed key decision-points, with reference to the latest version of the model LFS time-use modules. We highlight some advantages and some limitations of harnessing national LFS for modular time-use measurement in settings where a dedicated TUS is unfeasible. 

Time Use and well-being through the UK pandemic and after

Author: Gueorgiue Vassilev

Contributing author(s): Robynne Davies, William King, Joe White, Jediah Clark, Sally Wallace

The UK’s statistical institute, the Office for National Statistics, has developed an Online Time Use Survey (OTUS) and collected 4 representative waves collected during the pandemic period from March 2020 – March 2022 (with a further wave planned before March 2023) This has provided huge domestic insights into how people’s time use has been affected by the pandemic, and the design of the survey means it can be exploited to analysis how time use relates to individuals’ well-being, including their enjoyment of activities, and how that has changed as the UK has moved beyond the pandemic restrictions set by government institutions.

As the data has been collected with a partial longitudinal sample, this analysis will provide insights on how people’s time-use has changed across the different stages of pandemic restrictions and beyond. Given the focus and purposes of the UK’s OTUS design, particular insight will be provided on the role of digital in what people could do, such as looking at trends in enjoyment of activities, the physical/digital divide as it pertains to homeworking, online shopping, online social interaction, changes in patterns throughout the day for the home-working population, and how these differ across several demographics including gender, different parts of the income distribution and age. More recent policy-relevant analysis will also be provided to see how the cost of living crisis, through increased fuel, energy and food costs, may be impacting people’s behaviour in whether people are choosing to take on more unpaid household work than they would have otherwise done.

We will also present on ONS challenges in developing the OTUS to enable such measurements and our user-tested solutions, and where challenges remain, such as in capturing people’s passive care, and in exploring the parallel measurement of location and co-presence data to enable further insights. Finally, we will cover some of the successes we’ve experienced in developing an online-based survey, such as our adjustments to activities and questionnaires to keep pace with changing behaviours and policy focuses, particularly during the pandemic. This has included being able to identify people who were on coronavirus job retention schemes (furloughed) as well as whether they were self-isolating due to COVID, and certain activities that became more possible such as working from home and home-working.

Developing new guidance on modular time-use measurement: Application to Labour Force Surveys in LMICs

Author: Samantha Watson

Context: In this session, we present findings from an ongoing pilot project led by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), with Data 2X support. The study, titled: “Closing the gender data gap on unpaid care and domestic work”, is tasked with producing light time-use modules for attachment to national Labour Force Surveys (LFS) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The project contributes to wider efforts to support the production of national statistics on unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW). It is informed by parallel international efforts to harmonise time use measurement, including the work of the UNSD coordinated Expert Group on Innovative and Effective ways to collect Time-Use Statistics to update existing international guidance.

Objectives: Modular time-use measurement is an emerging field in LMICs. This project’s focus is on the development of a rigorous evidence base to inform module design and to guide national implementation/adaptation at scale. The project contributes to the longer-term objective of mainstreaming production of accurate, timely, and cost-effective statistics on UCDW. The integration of time use measurement within LFS lays the ground for a much fuller treatment of gender-based differences and inequities in work, employment and labour statistics, while also suppurting a fuller analysis of the contribution of unpaid work to national economies. 

Methods: This mixed-methods, multi-country pilot project combined intensive qualitative research and randomised survey experiments. Two module formats, a light, hybrid diary and a stylised question listing were developed. The separate study phases were designed to inform and evaluate priority aspects of the module design, the enumerator guidelines, and broader features of sample design and fielding.

Results and conclusions: We present key findings related to construct validity, survey fielding and operations, and the statistical performance and concordance of alternative module designs under an experimental study design. We discuss how the findings have informed key decision-points, with reference to the latest version of the model LFS time-use modules. We highlight some advantages and some limitations of harnessing national LFS for modular time-use measurement in settings where a dedicated TUS is unfeasible. 

Mapping French Firefighters shifts’ allocations: sociodemographic repartition & impact on time use

Author: Sébastian Grauwin

Contributing author(s): Pierre-Olivier Laffay, Lucie Leyronas, Marc Riedel

First-responders are at the front line of society problems at every hour of every day, which can put a heavy load on their time budget. This is especially true for French firefighters, a force made up of around 80% volunteers who contribute up to thousands of hours every year. The European Working Time Directive will soon impose limits on the hours put up by these volunteers. It may be beneficial for their individual well-being but will put more constraints on their schedules and may push a transformation in firefighters’ management system.

 In this context, our objective was to map and analyze the time-schedule of firefighters, to explore the pressure put on the individual agents and the management system. We studied the 2019 schedules of the firefighters (n=2572) from the Yvelines Departmental Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS 78), mainly organized in 12 or 24-Hour shifts. We studied how the allocation of shifts vary across various sociodemographic variables: gender, age, seniority, hierarchical rank, skills or status (professionals vs volunteers).

Our work offers insights on two levels. On the individual level: we estimated for each sociodemographic profile the time overlap between the firefighter’s engagement and their personal activities, as defined by the European Time Use Survey. On the team level: we built dedicated analytical tools to simulate shift schedules under various constraints, allowing us to put the emphasis on the circumstances when the system is the most vulnerable. 

Our data-driven analyses provide a renewed, objective overview on operational basics. They highlight practical and efficient measures that could be easily applied in the field. These analyses can help fire departments to avoid biases in management strategies, better understand the impact of small or major crisis and better prepare for future ones.

Bargaining over leisure time: evidence of gender gap within Brazilian households

Author: Ana Luiza Barbosa

Contributing author(s): Carlos Eugênio da Costa

This paper gathers data on the allocation of leisure across spouses within Brazilian couples. It also provides evidence on how this allocation has evolved in response to changes in factors impacting the household power and decision process. We write a simple collective model with household pro[1]duction to rationalize the data. Our results show substantial heterogeneity across households, and that, on average, women enjoy slightly less leisure time than men. We also show that relative wage increases power and dominates the conventional labor supply response. Our findings suggest that we need Pareto weights to vary with couples to account for the variation we find in the data.

Evaluating Leisure Time and Subjective Well-being in a Nationally Representative German Sample: A Compositional Data Analysis

Author: Elizabeth Chan

Contributing author(s): Felix Cheung

Time is a scarce resource, and misbalancing time spent on activities like work, leisure, and sleep can hurt our quality of life. Leisure is generally related to higher subjective well-being, which is characterized by greater life satisfaction, more positive emotions, and fewer negative emotions. However, given that time is inherently relative, spending more time on leisure necessarily means that less time is available for other activities. Previous studies on leisure time and subjective well-being failed to account for the relative nature of time, precluding the possibility of identifying activities that people should spend less time on in favour of leisure to promote well-being. The current study advances this research area by using compositional data analysis, which was specifically developed to handle compositional variables like time use (where time-use activities will always add up to 24 hours). This preregistered study examined whether spending time on leisure compared with other activities differentially predicts subjective well-being in a nationally representative sample using annual panel data from the German Socio-economic Panel Innovation Sample (N = 2,547; 2012-2015). Participants reported their time use using the Day Reconstruction Method and their life satisfaction, hope, positive affect, and negative affect. Compositional data analysis was employed to test whether reallocating time away from leisure and proportionally towards all other activities predicted well-being (i.e., one-to-many comparisons). We also used the compositional isotemporal substitution model to assess whether reallocating time away from leisure and towards each of the other domains predicted well-being (i.e., one-to-one comparisons). Overall, spending time on leisure versus other activities did not predict better well-being. Caretaking and work (versus leisure) were more beneficial for people’s well-being, possibly due to a greater sense of meaning in life and productivity. Additionally, sleep and eating (versus leisure) predicted greater well-being, possibly because they fulfill fundamental physiological needs. By using compositional data analysis, we highlight the relative nature of time use in the context of subjective well-being, an area that has not been studied using this analytical technique. This advances our understanding of how individuals can reallocate their limited time to live a more satisfying life.

Family’s daily mobility and telework: Changes in travel mode on the way to school for children

Author: Philippe Brodeur-Ouimet

In March 2020, Quebec’s government imposed sanitary restrictions in response to the global pandemic of COVID 19. These restrictions affected the daily habits of many households, including their daily mobility. This research aims to document the effects of sanitary restrictions on the travel modes to go to school for children related to changes in the parent daily mobility related to work and telework. A web survey to parents of children between 4 and 12 years old in different Quebec (Canada) regions addressed family mobility habits before and during the pandemic.

The results (n=102 respondents) illustrate changes in the mobility habits of parents and children due to reasons linked to the pandemic. In fact, a majority of the respondents were working outside of their home before the pandemic, which substantially change with the sanitary restrictions. The most frequent explanations of a change in household mobility are work-related, which include the imposition of telework. Worries concerning the physical distancing on the way to school was also a reason to change habits. Consequently, the modal share of active transportation for traveling to school went up, particularly walking, while car trips went down. Also, more children started to travel alone or with children of their age and less with an adult. For the parents, telework led to an increase of walking, both for leisure and for utility travels. Walking was more frequent for utility travels, e.g. grocery shopping, for parents teleworking, while the use of car or public transportation was more frequent for people working outside of their home. 

In conclusion, this survey provides a glance of how households dealt with circumstances of the sanitary restrictions, particularly due to the time management in a telework situation. Further study examining if those new mobility habits will stay in the long run are needed, especially for active travel mode.

Household production effects of non-wage benefits and working conditions in Ghana

Author: Emmanuel Orkoh

Contributing author(s): Frank Gyimah Sackey, Victoria Amoah

The literature on household production effects of labour market outcomes in developing countries has mainly focused on labour force participation, labour supply and wages with little attention to non-wage benefits and working conditions. This paper contributes to the literature on decent work by analyzing the effects of non-wage benefits and working conditions on household production in Ghana with particular attention to gender and geographical location of respondents. Using the instrumental variable estimation (IV) techniques to analyze data from the 6th round of the Ghana Living Standard Survey, we find that improved non-wage benefits and working conditions contribute to increase in hours of household production due to a statistically reduction in weekly hours of paid work. However, the results are statistically significant among males and urban residence. Policy implications of these results are discussed.

Big changes in daily activities across the course of the UK pandemic; but which of them will stick?

Author: Oriel Sullivan

Contributing author(s): Oriel Sullivan, Marga Vega-Rapun, Jonathan Gershuny

Using a unique UK-representative online time use diary survey, we examine the population’s behaviour both before, and at five key phases during, the COVID19 pandemic. A main focus of our analysis is which of the significant changes in activities associated with the pandemic survived the government-defined end of most restrictions on ‘freedom day’ (July 19th 2021). Our data includes a baseline pre-pandemic survey, conducted in 2016, followed by five subsequent waves coinciding with key moments of pandemic restrictions, including all three lockdowns and two periods of relaxation of restrictions between lockdowns and after the final lockdown. We find that changes in behaviour that characterised lockdown periods but did not persist following the end of restrictions were: watching more TV; spending more time doing other home-based leisure activities; and dramatically reducing leisure time spent out of the home, including socializing with friends. However, other important and policy-relevant changes in time use during the pandemic appeared to ‘stick’, i.e. persisted even after the lifting of most restrictions. These were: an increase in exercising; a shift to more active ways of travelling; the increased contribution of fathers to childcare; more shopping online, and more time spent doing paid work from home (teleworking). We examine the subjective enjoyment associated with these ‘sticky’ activities as a possible explanation for their persistence.

Title: Time Allocation and Gender Inequalities: A Time Use Comparison

Author: JYOTI THAKUR

Although significant progress has been achieved toward gender equality in recent decades, inequities based on gender norms, stereotypes, and unequal distribution of household work and care work responsibility still exist. Women and men's time usage patterns alter dramatically as a result of life events such as marriage and children. In 2019 India has released the results from it’s first Time use survey[1]. According to the survey report women in India spent 243 minutes per day on household work while men spent only 25 minutes. It is clear that women in India bears the brunt of the unpaid work and as a consequence despite having high educational achievements, their participation in paid work is shockingly low. This paper uses data from 1998 & 2019 survey to examine changes in the gender differences in time-use.  Activities are grouped into three groups: paid work, unpaid work, free-time (leisure & self-care). The paper provides insights into whether gender division in time use in India has changed at all between 1998 and 2019. The women in India are economically as well as time poor. Thus, this paper also dwells deep into household work to highlight the gender inequality in household chores. The Estimates are presented for all women & men, Single women and men and mothers and fathers.

[1] In 1998 government of India has conducted first pilot time use survey in six states- Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya.