It’s Time to “Do Economics” with Time-Use Data

Abstract

Time-use data are old and familiar in survey research, with the first rudimentary efforts going back nearly a century; and large-scale regularly collected data sets have been available in other countries (e.g., Germany, France) since 1965. It is only with the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) since 2003, however, that the US has moved from the derri?re to the avant garde of data quality and quantity in the area of time-use surveys. With a large fraction of the economics profession resident in the US, and with American scholarly economics journals being the most prestigious outlets for economists worldwide, the advent of these data and the wider availability of similar, albeit smaller and/or irregular time-use surveys from other countries present economists with exciting opportunities. The difficulty with these data sets is that they offer us the temptation of the quick tabulation and the simple regression on items that economists have not previously dis cussed: It is very easy to present information on gender differences in time spent in various categories of home production, leisure and personal maintenance and to adjust these for a wide array of other demographic characteristics. It is simple to examine how employment status is correlated with the kinds of non-market activities that people undertake, and even to study how one's spouse's employment status relates to one's non-market activities. Economists can do these calculations, we have done them and, no doubt will continue to produce this kind of research. But where is the economics? What do we have to offer here that could not be done at least as well by sociologists? Unless economists think like economists?use economic theory to model behavior related to time use, discover facts that might alter our theories, and generate predictions derived from those modified theories, we have nothing special to offer in this area. Economists should leave demographic accounting of time use to folks in other disci plines?they may have an absolute advantage in such research, and we certainly lack a comparative advantage in it. What subjects can we as economists study with these data? A by no means exhaustive list of research areas, in some of which a few early studies have already been generated, might include: