timeuse

Time use is the study of how people allocate their time among different activities within a given period, typically a day. It captures the distribution of time across paid work, unpaid domestic and caregiving tasks, education, transportation, leisure, sleep, and personal care. Time-use data help researchers understand how societies organize labor, leisure, and resources, and allow comparisons across populations and over time.

Data collection methods include time-use diaries or notebooks in which respondents record activities with timestamps, usually over 24 hours, or recall-based questionnaires. Activities are coded into standardized categories such as paid work, housework and caregiving, learning, transportation, and leisure. International efforts have developed harmonized classifications like the Harmonized European Time Use Surveys (HETUS) and the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS).

Uses and applications of time-use data include informing labor market analysis, gender studies, and social policy by quantifying unpaid work and estimating the opportunity costs of time spent on education or commuting. The data also support assessments of work-life balance, transport demand, energy consumption, and the planning of public services such as childcare and eldercare.

Limitations include reliance on self-reported information and potential recall bias, cultural differences in reporting and activity categorization, and day-to-day or seasonal variation. The method can be resource-intensive, and results depend on the chosen classification scheme and sampling design.

See also: time diary, work-life balance, unpaid labor, time economics.