Official Time Use Surveys – Still searching for policy applications?

1. Official Time Use Surveys – Still searching for policy applications? Michael Bittman Social Policy Research Centre University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia

2. Securing the future of time use collections Experience shows that ensuring the regular collection of large-scale, high quality time data depends on the engagement official statistical agencies (U.S./U.K. experience) But official agencies will not be funded to collect this data without a clear idea of its application in policy-making (e.g. Australia and Canada)

3. Personal computers and the ‘killer’ application Personal computers remained things found only in the garages of nerds until ‘spreadsheets’ demonstrated an application which made these devices desirable. I think we still searching for the analogous ‘killer’ application for time use data

4. Recent history of time use studies and their applications 1920-70 1920-30s Labour theory of value (USSR) and domestic science (USA) Interregnum 1960s –Progress towards socialist utopia (Eastern bloc) and television broadcasting and its effects Interregnum

5. History of time use studies and their applications since 1970 1979-1989: Informal economy (especially in Eastern Europe), domestic economy and the prospects for gender equity (especially in the West) 1990-2000: Vestigial measurement of economic transition in East, elsewhere an interest in the value of non-market production (especially by women), trends in domestic organisation, the spectre of overwork/decline of leisure, elder care, technological change (IT and the internet)

6. Some personal suggestions for the first decade of the 21 century Need to demonstrate the policy significance of knowing the value of non-market production – revised estimates of growth, wealth and inequality? Study of the relationship between market and non-production (e.g.outsourced child care) The reconciliation of work and family remains unresolved but becomes more urgent with every passing year as dual earner households become the norm

7. Some personal suggestions for the first decade of the 21 century (continued) Parenting and child development (diaries of children’s activities) Informal care the well-being of the frail elderly The relationship between sociability/civic participation and the prospects for democracy and prosperity Effect of working time regimes on families, children and communities

8. Some personal suggestions for the first decade of the 21 century (continued) Public health applications for time use Obesity and physical activity patterns Exposures (especially of children – sun and hazard of skin cancer, pet hair and the risks of asthma, etc) Health effects of ‘leisure-time poverty’

9. These applications depend on Key items in instruments which accompany the diary (in Australia we gained great benefit from asking about non-parental child care arrangement, disability and carers, uptake of domestic outsourcing, ownership of selected household technology, patterns of paid work last week and time pressure) More regular and sophisticated use MTUS as policy laboratory (this implies the need for databanks on policy setting in survey countries in the relevant years) And especially on the creativity of the membership of IATUR