Gender Differences in Life-Time Use of One-Person Households and Subjective Time Poverty in the Young Generation

Abstract

Recently, increasing one-person households, especially in the young generation, is one of the most important issues reflecting changes in the Korean family and society. The purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in life time use of one-person households aged 25 to 39, comparing with husband-wife couples of the same ages, and to investigate the determinants of subjective time poverty. Data are from the 2014 Life Time Survey by Statistics Korea. The major results are as follows. First, gender differences in time use of single youths were found in home management hours on weekdays. Female one-person householders spent more time in home management than their male counterparts, while male one-person householders spent more time in home management than young husband-wife groups. In addition, a much larger gender difference was found between young husbands and wives. Second, different effects on the subjective time poverty were found in both the groups. Based on these results, the implications for several specialized education and social programs for male and female one-person householders used in the local healthy families support centers are provided. Keywords: young one-person households, life-time use, subjective time poverty, gender differences