Cross-national Comparisons of change in the Structure of Everyday Life: Evidence from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS)

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Cross-national Comparisons of change in the
Structure of Everyday Life Evidence from the
Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS)

• Jonathan Gershuny
• Centre for Time Use Research
• Department of Sociology,
• University of Oxford

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Centre for Time Use Research

• Activities
• Research
• Information and Resources
• Access to time use data
• Produce MTUS
• Maintain AHTUS
• www.timeuse.org

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Introduction

• Academic motivation
• Running out of time?
• Womens dual burden?
• A harried leisure class?
• Introduction to the MTUS
• Time diary studies
• International comparisons
• Work/life imbalance?
• Time, interests, social structure
• Time-use Keynesianism
• The new badge of honour

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Academic motivation 1

• Veblen 1908 the leisure class
• Dumazadier 1960 the leisure society
• Linder 1970 harried leisure class
• Vanek 1974, counterintuitive technology
• Meissner et al 1975, dual burden
• Schor 1990 overworked American
• Robinson and Godbey 1999 not overworked.

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Academic motivation 1

• Marx 1866 exploitation ratetime dominance
• Veblen 1908 the leisure class
• Dumazadier 1960 the leisure society
• Linder 1970 harried leisure class
• Vanek 1974, counterintuitive technology
• Meissner et al 1975, dual burden
• Schor 1990 overworked American
• Robinson and Godbey 1999 not overworked.

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Academic motivation 2

• Jacobs and Gerson 2004 Time Divide
• Changing balance of paid, unpaid work, leisure
• ? gendered differences in human capital
• ? work-rich time-poor / time-rich work-poor
• life-course effects eg fertility strikes
• Esping Andersen 1999 Social Foundations
• Post-industrial welfare, childcare, etc. regimes
• Outcomes reflect choices within households
• Household choices reflect regime provisions

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CTUR investigations

• More inclusive national accounts, of production
  in and out of the economy.
• Modelling diverse interests Who does what? Who
  gets what?
• Cross-national and historical differences and
  similarities in activity patterns.
• Explanations of these in terms of history,
  culture, technology and public regulation.

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CTUR investigations

• More inclusive national accounts, of production
  in and out of the economy
• Modelling diverse interests Who does what? Who
  gets what?
• Cross-national and historical differences and
  similarities in activity patterns.
• Explanations of these in terms of history,
  culture, technology and public regulation.

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A Time-use Diary (HETUS)
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Large scale time diary collections

• Strumilin 1921
• Sorokin and Berger 1937
• BBC Audience Research 19381975
• Szalai Multinational Study 1965
• Harmonised European Time Use Study 1998-2003
  (HETUS)
• American Time Use Study 2003 (CPS)
• Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS)

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Multinational Time Use Study
N of days 1961-69 1970-75 1976-84 1985-89 1990-94 1995-99 2000-04
Canada 2138 2682 9618 8936 10726 ()
Denmark 4069 (2389) ()
France (2898) (4633) () 15318
Nethlands 1292 2727 3263 3158 3227 1649
Norway 6516 6068 6129 7675
UK 9292 17507 18060 1906 19400
USA 2021 7010 4935 9386 1151 20340
Finland 11908 15219 10076
Italy (2116) 37764 ()
Australia 3181 13806 14071 ()
Sweden 7065 7747
Germany (3687) 25775 ()
Austria 25162
S. Africa 14217
Slovenia 12273
Belgium, Hungary, Czech, Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Portugal etc Belgium, Hungary, Czech, Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Portugal etc Belgium, Hungary, Czech, Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Portugal etc Belgium, Hungary, Czech, Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Portugal etc Belgium, Hungary, Czech, Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Portugal etc Belgium, Hungary, Czech, Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Portugal etc N 457,135
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Evolution of MTUS

• WORLD5.0 (2000)
• Represents populations aged 20-60
• 40 aggregated time-use activity categories
• 15 socio-demographic classifiers
• WORLD5.5 (2007)
• Represents full age range (above 10)
• 40 aggregated time-use activity categories
• 30 socio-demographic classifiers
• WORLD6.0 (now under discussion)
• Revised (more detailed) activity classification
• full activity sequence data

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The importance of gender d.o.l.

• Gendered work specialisation within households
  not inherently inequitable if
• Consumption fairly shared within households
• Household membership persists throughout
  life-course.
• But human capital formation uniquely associated
  with participation in paid work.
• Hence growing family instability must be
  associated with reduction in gendering of unpaid
  work.

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Veblen Theory of the Leisure Class

• Leisure as the badge of honour
• Conspicuous leisure denoting superordinate
  social status.
• imperativethe requirement of abstention from
  productive work. (p36)
• The principle of emulation
• Each rank of society seeks to emulate the pattern
  of life of that rank immediately above it in
  terms of prestige.
• Empirical implication
• positive leisure/status gradient

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The superordinate working class

• The centrality of knowledge in post-industrial
  society (Daniel Bell 1975)
• knowledge elites and the technocracy
• Post-materialism. or Gordon Gecko?
• Economic primacy of human capital
• Population ageing ? hum cap formation as key
  means of intergenerational status transmission
• Income from human capital during working life,
  from wealth in retirement.
• Highest incomes from work not wealth.
• ? work as the new badge of honour

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The Leisure Paradox.

• Staffan Linder harrying the leisured
• Rational to equalise marginal returns on
  different sorts of time, but this implies that
• productivity growth must be matched by growth in
  intensity of consumption.
• Time-use Keynesianism
• Need to redistribute time available for
  consumption, since
• more leisure (for some) means more work (for
  others).

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Time, Interests, Social Structure

• New conflicts of interest
• Between men and women.
• Between young and old.
• Between human capital-rich and human capital-poor
  (meritocracy vs citizenship).
• Fought out in the arena of the societys Great
  Day, the 24 hours that represent the one
  irresolvable social scarcity.

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Some time-use references.

• A Szalai The Use of Time, The Hague Mouton 1974.
• J Vanek Housework still takes time Scientific
  American, 231, 1974 pp. 116120.
• M Meissner, EW Humpreys, SM Meis and WJ Scheu,
  No Exit for Wives sexual division of labour and
  the cumulation of household demands Canadian
  Review of Sociology and Anthropology 12, 1975, pp
  424-39.
• J Schor, The Overworked American the unexpected
  decline of leisure, New York Basic Books.
• J Robinson and J Godbey Time for Life the
  surprising ways Americans use time 1999
• J Gershuny, Changing Times work and leisure in
  post-industrial society, Oxford University Press
  2000.
• J Jacobs and K Gerson 2004 The Time Divide
  work, family and gender inequality. Cambridge
  Mass Harvard University Press.