Time-Use Measurement and Research Report of a Workshop (2000) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Importance of Time-Use Data
2 The Importance of Time-Use Data
Pages 5-14
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From page 5... ...
Time-use data can help in understanding how these policies affect the amount of time that parents spend working at home or outside the home and how much time they spend with their children. Aside from public policy uses, time-use data can improve our understanding of individual and household behavior, especially with respect to time allocation decisions and in improving our knowledge of the wellbeing of the nation.
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From page 6... ...
The NIPA accounts almost exclusively measure only market production and, hence, do not take into account goods and services such as the production and consumption of meals at home that a household produces for its own private consumption or for any household production that is not traded in the formal market but is consumed by others, such as giving a neighbor fresh tomatoes from your garden. A goal of the accounts is to comprehensively tabulate all economic activity in the nation (Landefeld and McCulla, 19991.
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From page 7... ...
Using data from the 1980s, the study adjusts GDP from 1946 to 1997 by including measures of nonmarket household production and by counting household expenditures on consumer durables as investment. One particularly interesting result is that the growth in total nominal output for 1946-1997 would be estimated at a 7.1 percent annual rate instead of the official 7.3 percent annual rate when nonmarket production is included and household durables are treated as investment in GDP.
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From page 8... ...
Some of the policy questions raised in the previous section apply here as well. For example, one question is how tax and employment policies, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, family leave policies, and subsidized child care, affect household decisions regarding how much to work in the home or in the market for pay.
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From page 9... ...
, subsidized public colleges, and federal and state grant and loan programs for college students and educational tax credits are all publicly funded investments to develop skills and to train current and future employees. How policies affect time spent in these activities is an important question on an individual level.
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From page 10... ...
Workshop participants discussed several policy considerations that could be informed by data on time spent in care-taking or care-receiving activities. One example is how subsidized child care for lowincome families affects parents' time spent working for pay.
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From page 11... ...
As Rebecca Blank stated at the workshop, an important part of evaluating welfare reform is understanding how the new work requirements affect a segment of the population that previously received public assistance and worked less than they now do. TIME-USE DATA FOR UNDERSTANDING WELL-BEING Collecting time-use data on how retirees spend their time and on how much time Americans spend in educational activities or in volunteer activities need not be justified only for policy purposes.
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From page 12... ...
For example, as the American population ages, it would be interesting to track changes in time use. If Americans are spending fewer years in the labor force, is it because people retire earlier, as some workshop participants suggested, or is it because more and more young adults are going to college, delaying full-time entry into the paid labor force for several years, and because many middle-aged Americans are going back to college or receiving additional training, which takes them out of the full-time labor force, as other participants suggested?
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From page 13... ...
Others may not experience such tangible negative effects of the time crunch, but may instead feel that their quality of life is not as good as it was or could be. Workshop participants argued that understanding these trends in how people feel about their use of time or lack of time for leisure activities can give a more complete picture of the quality of life and changes in the quality of life in the United States.
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From page 14... ...
14 TIME- USE MEASUREMENT AND RESEARCH ductive than others in a given period for a given activity)
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