tidsforbrug

Tidsforbrug refers to the amount of time people devote to different activities. It is usually expressed as hours or minutes per day or week. The concept covers paid work, unpaid work such as household tasks and caregiving, as well as education, leisure, sleep and personal care. Researchers use tidsforbrug to understand how people allocate scarce time and how time use relates to well-being and living standards.

Measurement is typically done with time-use surveys or diaries in which respondents record activities across a day or several days. Data are grouped into activity categories and used to build national time budgets and cross-national comparisons. Methodological challenges include diary accuracy, recall bias, and differences in activity coding between surveys.

Tidsforbrug data inform policy by revealing patterns in paid and unpaid work, care responsibilities, and how policies such as childcare, transportation, or flexible work affect daily schedules. In economics and sociology, time-use analysis examines time poverty, labor supply, productivity, and the opportunity costs of different activities.

Advances in data collection and analysis address new forms of time use, including digital and screen time, leisure that occurs in a connected world, and varied work arrangements. Harmonization efforts aim to improve comparability across countries and over time.

The term is Danish in origin and commonly used in English-language research as time-use or time-use data. It is a core element of demographic and labor market statistics collected by many national statistical offices.