The Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Data and Methods

The Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Data and Methods is a two-volume handbook, written by leading international scholars, provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on the collection, analysis, and application of time use data. Several chapters in the handbook are authored/ co-authored by Care Economies in Context team members from country teams around the world.

Volume 1, Chapter 8: Administering time diaries by telephone

Authors: Patricia Houle and Dana Wray, Statistics Canada (Care Economies in Context Canada team)

Abstract: How are time diaries collected by telephone interviews? This chapter looks at Canada’s Time Use Survey, one of the longest-running time use surveys in the world. For over 30 years, Statistics Canada has collected time diaries via telephone interviews and Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). This chapter explores how telephone interviewing has evolved over the decades in Canada and addresses the advantages and challenges of telephone interviews for time use statistics. This chapter closes by considering the shift to online questionnaires and speculates on the future of telephone interviewing for time use surveys.

Volume 1, Chapter 14: Incidence of overlapping or simultaneous activities

Author: Maria Floro, American University (Care Economies in Context macro-economic modeling team)

Abstract: This chapter begins by examining the significance of overlapping activities or multitasking, especially for women’s time use. It discusses various forms of secondary activity and suggests some approaches for documenting overlapped activities in time use survey data. Using 1992 Australian Time Use survey data, it gives an example of the techniques of weighting, matrix construction and usage of context variables in measuring the time spent in overlapping activities. It discusses the rationale for documenting such activities using time use surveys, namely, that failing to do so gives a distorted picture of what people actually do in a day. It also discusses various methods of collecting data on secondary activities and describes the time use survey data and the data-processing method for creating primary and secondary variables. This chapter concludes with some examples of techniques for accounting for secondary and tertiary activities.

Volume 1, Chapter 20: The care economy and unpaid care

Author: Nancy Folbre, University of Massachusetts Amherst (Care Economies in Context Advisory Board)

Abstract: This chapter discusses the concept of the care economy and addresses some limitations of time use research measuring unpaid care work. After a brief history of attempts to measure the time devoted to care work and debates over its productivity, it describes the limitations of existing efforts to measure it. Many time use surveys have failed to grasp the full extent of childcare, not to mention care of other frail individuals. In particular, the conventional focus on activities can ignore ‘passive’ or ‘on-call’ care, where the carer is not actually doing anything but cannot leave the care recipient alone. This responsibility has especially significant implications for the time use of women, which often results in a considerable loss of lifetime earnings.

Volume 1 Citation

Bittman, M., & Sullivan, O. (Eds.). (2026). The Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Data and Methods: Time Use Research Volume 1 (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003664529

Volume 2, Chapter 11: Conceptualizing parenting time

Authors: Melissa A. Milkie (Care Economies in Context Canada team), Kei Nomaguchi

Abstract: Much time use research centres on a cluster of mothers’ and fathers’ ‘childcare’ activities to assess how parents’ time investments in children change across different eras and how different groups engage in parenting. ‘Childcare’ time, though, constitutes less than one-third of parents’ time spent co-present with children and is an even smaller portion of time if responsibility for or supervisory time watching children is counted. Research focused only on childcare activities is thus limited and can be incorrectly understood as all parents’ ‘time with’ children. Drawing upon a critical, intersectional approach, this chapter calls for rethinking how we assess care for and time with children for a more rich picture of parenting time. Moreover, broadening the parenting time lens to include diverse forms of co-present time underscores how different social groups approach and structure time with children and can better account for nuanced ways that parents raise the next generation.

Volume 2, Chapter 12: Daily time use of dual-earner couples with young children and their work–life balance in Korea from 2009 to 2019

Authors: Sarah Rhee, Ki-Soo Eun (Care Economies in Context Korea team)

Abstract: Korean Time Use Survey data from 2009 to 2019 were used to observe changes in time allocated to paid work, family work, and personal time, comparing differences between men and women in dual-earner couples with young children. Increasingly, men spent more time on family work, sleep, and personal care, while women spent more time on personal care, sleep, and leisure. Men’s share of family work steadily increased but remained significantly lower than women’s. However, the difference between men and women steadily decreased as men’s total work time increased and women’s total work time decreased. Work–family balance was an issue for both women and men; a ‘time balance coefficient’ showed that men’s lives were still more centred on paid work and women’s lives were more centred on family work. Korean society should allow men in dual-earner parent couples to reduce paid work and participate more actively in family life, thereby improving the work–life balance of both spouses.

Volume 2, Chapter 18: Balance in time use and life satisfaction of older people in Korea

Author: Jiweon Jun (Care Economies in Context Korea team)

Abstract: This chapter explores the relationship between the way older people use their time and well-being in later life in Korea, applying the ‘life balance framework’. This framework was developed to examine how patterns of time use change across the life course in terms of the balance between constraints (constrained time), freedom of choice (discretionary time), and time spent on biological maintenance (regenerative time), this chapter illustrates how the time use of Korean people aged 65 and older varies by gender, age, and economic activity status. Using data from the 2014 Korean Time Use Survey, this study shows that the balance in time use in Korea shifts towards having greater discretionary and less constrained time in later life as shown in previous studies in other countries such as the UK, yet with a considerably larger gender gap which persists even in very old ages. More importantly, this study found a negative relationship between having too much discretionary time and older people’s level of life satisfaction, which supports the assumption of the life balance framework that having too much free time can also be detrimental to well-being.

Volume 2, Chapter 23: Cross-national historical change in sleep durations and timing

Authors: Juana Lamote de Grignon Pérez, Ekaterina Hertog, Jiweon Jun (Care Economies in Context Korea team), Margarita Vega Rapun, Man-Yee Kan

Abstract: Sleep’s vital role in maintaining good health and bodily functions has raised concerns about a possible sleep deprivation epidemic. Evidence supporting this idea, however, is primarily based on answers to questions like: ‘on average, how many hours of sleep do you get in a 24-hr period?’, this type of measure has been shown to lack reliability. Time use diaries offer the best option to study sleep changes in the absence of nationally representative samples of objective measures. This chapter contributes to the literature by utilizing a larger sample of time use diaries than any previous study, including some Asian samples that had never been used before for this purpose. The analysis reveals no evidence supporting a sleep deprivation epidemic; in fact, sleep appears to have improved in the majority of countries analysed.

Volume 2, Chapter 34: Gender, household division of labour and time allocation of women and men

Author: Maria S. Floro (Care Economies in Context macro-economic modeling team)

Abstract: This chapter aims to demonstrate how TUS data describe gender patterns in all activities, revealing the amount of unpaid care and domestic work in the household, and the unequal burden on women and men, girls and boys. First, it introduces the concept of time allocation and discusses the role of gender in influencing the time use of women and men. It then demonstrates how to use time use data to estimate the proportion of unpaid household work performed by female and male household members. This information is vital for estimating Sustainable Development Goal indicator 5.4.1, ‘the proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work’, which monitors a country’s progress towards SDG target 5.4, ‘the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family’.

Volume 2, Chapter 37: Assessing the impact of public investments

Authors: Mungunsuvd Terbish, Maria S. Floro (Care Economies in Context macro-economic modeling team)

Abstract: This chapter aims to demonstrate the usefulness of time use data for policy analysis by examining the gendered impact of public investments on basic infrastructures using the 2011 Mongolia Time Use Survey data. Using Tobit regression approach, the analysis focuses on the relationship between access to public infrastructures, such as those providing safe water, and the unpaid domestic work and care work performed by prime-aged women and men in Mongolia. This chapter then explains the structure of the data set and the steps necessary for data preparation and analysis, and provides an interpretation for the obtained results.

Volume 2 Citation

Bittman, M., & Sullivan, O. (Eds.). (2026). The Routledge International Handbook of Time Use Themes and Applications: Time Use Research Volume 2 (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003664543

Abstract

This two-volume handbook, written by leading international scholars, provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on the collection, analysis, and application of time use data.

Time is a crucial yet finite social resource, fundamental to processes of growth, equality, and well-being. Much of the world’s essential production—raising children, preparing food, household maintenance—occurs within households, and relies on time, rather than monetary exchange, as its central input. Despite its centrality, this non-market dimension is often overlooked in official indicators. Time use diary data is increasingly recognised as the foremost source of reliable information on these key temporal dimensions of daily life.

The second volume provides an authoritative outline of the contribution of time use research to key contemporary scholarly and policy applications in both the Global North and the Global South. The chapters consist of a wide-ranging selection of exemplary contributions chosen to illustrate the varied areas of substantive empirical research for which time use diary data has been used in research across the globe, including gender and life-course studies, research on employment and the labour force, care-giving, and contributions to the measurement of both population well-being and sustainable development goals.

With a focus on the application and future directions of time use research, it will be a valuable point of reference for students and scholars from fields including sociology, demography, social policy, economics, gender studies, psychology, leisure and tourism studies, public health, and legal studies. The first volume of the handbook addresses methodological issues concerning the collection and analysis of data. The second volume of the handbook provides an authoritative outline of the contribution of time-use research to key contemporary scholarly and policy applications in both the Global North and the Global South.