The three tables here provide the reader with a snapshot of “an average week in the life” of the usual working-aged population between 18 and 64 years in 23 countries (see the methodological notes at the end for two slight exceptions to the age range). Table 1 covers the 168 h weekly hours for people of both sexes, Table 2 covers the weekly hours for women only, while Table 3 covers men. All three tables cover weekly hours spent on 31 activities (and a subtotal for free time) that are grouped in four broad categories: paid work and education; household, family and social care; sleep and other personal care; and free time. Parallel tables for percent participating in these activities and average time per participant, along with weekday and weekend day differences, can be found in the technical paper version of this publication on http://www.timeuse.org/research/technical-papers. Some observations drawn in this technical paper that are not displayed in Tables 1–3 are highlighted in italics in the text below.
Table 1
Average weekly hours for whole population: Age 18–64
Table 2
Average weekly hours for women: Age 18–64
Table 3
Average weekly hours for men: Age 18–64
Readers should interpret these data cautiously since some national differences may reflect cultural differences in reporting or coding procedures rather than actual behavior. These tables update, expand and supersede the parallel Tables 1–3 for 18 countries reported in Fisher and Robinson (2009)—again see the methodological notes at the end for further comment, as well for information on year(s) of data collection and sample sizes.
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These country-level diary data generally average daily activities across a year by collecting random-day diaries from large samples of working-age people on all days of the week and all weeks of the year. All individuals occasionally experience unusual days, but the rate of unusual days across the population will be captured by this methodology. Numerous cultural, technological and social constraints affect these diary accounts, including geography and proximity to facilities; access to money, support transport and technological resources; social conventions, and climate/weather, among many other factors. By collecting a random sample of person-days of activity across a random sample of the population, time-diary surveys reveal the range of common patterns of activity happening in a society. They also reveal which groups of people are more or less likely to engage in particular activities across the 168 h of the week in terms of work, sleep and free time.
For activities like sleeping and eating that everyone does almost every day, the figures in Tables 1–3 represent the average time for the whole population. For activities that people do not do every day, like work or shopping, the average time on any given day will be lower than the average time for people who did do activity on their diary day. Thus, not every person holds down a job for the whole of their working life, and those employed will not work all days of the week. The average of four hours of paid work time per day in the technical paper reflect the amount of paid work undertaken by people across that society on any given day. This amounts to around four hours per person of working age. The less frequently people do an activity (such as voluntary work), or the lower the proportion of people in a society who engage in the activity (such as pet care), the lower the average time for a society on any given day.
1 Activity Differences by Country
1.1 Work
Table 1 first confirms expectations the Japanese work the longest hours, 6–19 weekly hours more than any other country once commuting and education time are included. High paid work hours also are found in Brazil, Canada, the Republic of Korea, and the USA; while the lowest work hours are found in Belgium and the Netherlands. Surprisingly, people in the USA report the lowest commuting hours. Poles and Lithuanian report longer hours working at home.
There are a number of other national and regional level variations in percents participating. Broadly, people in Brazil, Eastern European countries, Japan, Canada and the US have a higher percentage of people working on a given day (as high as 2/3rds in Brazil, Latvia, Lithuania and the USA). Eastern Europeans, Americans and Brazilians also have higher rates of working at home, with the working at home participation highest in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Certain work patterns in the detailed website tables appear across many countries, like on weekdays, when people both are more likely to work and to work longer hours than on weekend days.
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1.2 Household Care
Higher than average hours of housework are found in the Eastern countries of Slovenia and Bulgaria—24 weekly hours—compared with the low end of the range–16 h in Brazil and Japan. The norm for most countries is around 20 h. Within these housework hours, highest meal preparation times are found in Turkey, Bulgaria and Poland. Highest cleaning and other “core” housework appear in Bulgaria and Slovenia; lowest housework is found in Japan, Korea and Brazil (where men average less than 2 h a week of home cleaning). Shopping times vary from 2 h in Eastern Europe to nearly 6 h in Korea. While the majority of people do some unpaid work each day, the unpaid domestic work participation rate is lowest in Brazil, Italy, Latvia, Spain, and Turkey–largely reflecting men’s particularly low participation in unpaid work in these countries.
1.3 Child Care
Total child care time is highest in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the USA. In all countries, men’s participation rate in childcare is lower than women’s. Except in Australia, Japan, Korea, Norway, and Turkey, where child care time is similar on all days of the week, in the other countries, people spend longer in child care on weekdays than on weekend days. The lower time in childcare on weekends primarily reflects women’s drop in participation rate, as well as decreased time in childcare on weekends.
1.4 Organization Time
Probably because of religious devotion, people in Turkey, Brazil, Canada and the US are highest in such group activity. However, the Dutch are also relatively high on these activities. People in most countries do more voluntary, civic and organizational work on weekends than on week days. In Australia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Korea and Turkey, people spend roughly equal times in voluntary and organizational activities on all days, and participation rates are equal for all days in Norway and Turkey, and for men in the Netherlands. Women in the Netherlands do more voluntary and organizational activity on weekdays.
1.5 Sleep and Personal Care
People in most of these countries sleep between 8 and 8.5 h per night, which translates to 56–60 h per week of sleep. People in Bulgaria and France sleep longer—nearly 9 h per week more than people Japan and Korea, who average only 7.6 h sleep per night. Brazilians and Italians spend the most time washing and dressing. Highest grooming times are found in Japan and Korea, versus the lowest times in Bulgaria and Slovenia. (The time in washing for Turkey appears high, but the diary instrument in that country combined eating and personal care into a single category). Considering eating and washing time together, however, Turks and Italians spend most time in these two activities. Considering sleep, eating, and grooming, Bulgarians, the French, Italians and Spaniards spend more time in these personal care activities
People in Brazil and the USA record less time in eating than in the other countries (though time eating is not necessarily related to the quantity of food or of calories consumed). Highest home-meal times are found in France, with meal times in other Western European countries also being above average.
Walking times are highest in Spain, and lowest in the US. Other high sports-fitness activity is found in the Scandinavian countries
1.6 Social Life
Norwegians, Americans, and particularly the Turks, spend the most time socializing, either entertaining people in their own homes or visiting in other people’s homes. Swedes have a high participation rate in visiting people at home, but spend only an average time visiting when they visit. People in the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the UK and the USA spend the most time socializing with others outside the home.
The French spend the longest total hours in restaurants. When they eat out, people in Belgium, Brazil, and the Netherlands (as well as the French) spend the longest time in restaurants. People in the Eastern European countries generally spend less time in restaurants and go out to eat less often.
1.7 Mass Media
Television is by far the most prominent activity in free time, consuming a third or more of it. Except for the Netherlands (only 8 h a week), TV takes up 12 to 16 h a week—even in Japan, where they watch 14 h a week out of their 31 h of free time available. Average viewing time in other countries (mainly 8–14 h per week) is somewhat lower than the 16 weekly h in the US, and with about the same amount (35–40 h) of total free time to spend viewing. In percentage of free time terms, the 40% of free time figure for the US can be seen as notably higher than in most Western European countries (where it tends to be less than 30%, even dipping to less than 20% in the Netherlands). However, the US percent of free time figure is lower than in Bulgaria (48%), Japan (45%), or most Baltic countries (up to 46%), although all of these countries tend to have somewhat less free time (31–36 weekly hours) available to watch. People in Bulgaria, France, Japan and Norway spend the least time relaxing.
People in Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway spend the longest time reading books and other printed matter. Australians, Belgians, the Dutch, Germans, Norwegians and Swedes are more likely to spend free time on the computer on a daily basis, (though while when on the computer, people in Korea, the UK and the USA, as well as in the countries, spend a relatively longer time on-line compared with the other countries in these tables). People in Brazil and Eastern European countries are least likely to spend free time on the computer.
1.8 Overall Free Time
When the activities of walking, sports, organizations, social life, media and other free-time activities are added together, least free time is found in Japan (30 h) and the most in Belgium (43 h) and Norway (44 h).
People in these 23 countries have more hours of free time (for both in-home and out-of-home activities) on a weekend than on weekdays, though the participation rate is constant across the days of the week for in-home leisure—meaning similar numbers of people engage in free time each day, but people take more time for in-home leisure on the weekend.
2 Gender Differences
These tables also confirm existing stereotypes regarding gender differences. Men average 2–4 more hours of free time than women per week, and also spend more time in paid work, though the gender gap in paid work and education time as well as participation in work is smallest in Bulgaria and France. While women and men do comparable levels of paid work at home (except in Latvia, where women are more likely to do paid work from home), distinct gender differences emerge in relation to other work patterns.
Women spend more time, and are also more likely to engage, in unpaid domestic work and care than men—with the gender differences most pronounced in Brazil, Italy, Spain and Turkey, and the greatest gender equality in Norway and Sweden.
Generally, men do more voluntary and organizational activity, though with a number of exceptions. In Brazil, Finland, Italy and the United Kingdom, men spend more time in voluntary and organizational work, while women have a higher participation rate. In Spain and the USA, women and men have comparable voluntary time, and in Turkey, women not only participate more than men, their average weekly voluntary activity time is higher than men’s.
In all countries, women are more likely to perform physical and medical care tasks for children than men. Among those who care for children, men and women spend similar amounts of time traveling for child care purposes. The same is generally true for people engaging in interactive care (such as reading to children or playing with children), though in Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia men spend slightly longer than women in this more entertaining form of child care.
With the exceptions of Brazil and Spain, where men spend more time in pet care, women in the other countries generally performed more pet care than men and had higher participation rates. The gender gap is highest in the Netherlands, where women’s participation in pet care on an average day is nearly double men’s participation.
If one sums total time in all paid work and study, unpaid domestic, child and pet care, and voluntary and organizational activity, women do more weekly total work than men in 15 of these countries—and the gap is particularly pronounced in the five countries: Bulgaria, France, Italy, Lithuania, and Slovenia. In three countries, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway, men do more total work, and in the remaining four countries, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA, total work time is roughly equal between the genders.
2.1 Methodological Notes
Age category differences are found in Sweden and Japan. The survey in Sweden only sampled people aged 20 and older, and hence Tables 1–3 cover the age range 20–64. The survey in Japan collected age by 10-year groups rather than individual ages, and consequently, the age range for this survey covers 15–65.
The previous version of these tables, published in Social Indicators Research, volume 93 Time Use and Qualities of Life (pages 249–254) had mislabeled table headings. In that article, Table 1 should have been labeled time for all people, Table 2, time for men and Table 3 time for women.
Figures for Brazil were derived from a single city survey in Minas Gerais. This Belo Horizonte Time Use Research Survey team interviewed a probability sample of 376 households and produced the data column for Brazil in Tables 1–3.
Figures for 13 of the European countries were derived from the Harmonised European Time Use Survey table generator maintained by Statistics Sweden. Data from two further countries, France and the UK, are included on this site. Elements of this site, https://www.testh2.scb.se/tus/tus/, are openly available, but government researchers working in the EU can obtain permission to use the customized table generator. The default age setting of 20–74 was reset to the age range 18–64. The HETUS table generator has collapsed activity codes into 49 2-digit categories. Norway did not collect time in free time study, included in the category study and job or skill training, or unspecified travel included in other travel. Norway and Finland did not collect time tending domestic animals, but included it under all other housework and repairs.
Figures for Australia, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom are drawn from the Multinational Time Use Study version 5.58 (http://www.timeuse.org/mtus/). Figures for Australia were compiled in Australia by an Australian researcher holding permission to use the data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Figures for Japan represent the population aged 15–65. These data are available for the whole population by gender only, and not the participant population. The Statistics Bureau of Japan constructed the column from the 2006 national sample survey which is part of a sequence of time-use surveys it conducts every five years. Figures for the Republic of Korea are available for the whole population only, and are based on the 2004 survey, part of a sequence of time-use surveys collected every five years by the National Statistical Office. The column was compiled by academic staff using the public use file available in the Republic of Korea.
Figures for Turkey are drawn from the public release file of the 2006 national time use study collected by the official Turkish statistical agency, TURKSTAT. While this survey followed the HETUS format, the data are released in highly aggregated form to Turkish nationals. As a result, some activities are more grouped for this country, hence the large numbers of not available categories.
Figures for the USA are drawn from the American Heritage Time Use Study version of the first year of the American Time Use Study collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from a subsample of the last wave of the Current Population Survey (CPS). This dataset harmonizes the most recent ATUS data for comparison with historical USA time-use datasets, which readers can download from the Centre for Time Use Research website, http://www.timeuse.org/ahtus/.
Figures for Canada were calculated independently from a file detailing each of the 200+ basic activities coded in their General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by Statistics Canada among Canadians aged 18–64. These activities were then recoded into the most appropriately matched category of those listed in Tables 1–3.
In order to highlight countries with greater similarity to each other, country listings for Tables 1–3 were first broadly categorized by geographical contiguity and then alphabetically within that category:
1.
North/South American and Oceania: Australia, Brazil, Canada, USA
2.
Central European: Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK
3.
Northern European/Nordic: Finland, Norway, Sweden
4.
Eastern European: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia
5.
Southern European/ Mediterranean: Italy, Spain, Turkey
6.
Asian: Japan, Korea.
Such ordering is far from perfect, but allows certain similarities to become more apparent.
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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
The relevant years and sample sizes for the time-diary data in Tables 1–3 are as follows:
Year(s) | Sample sizes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) Total | (2) Women | (3) Men | ||
Australia | 2006 | 10,629 | 5612 | 5017 |
Brazil | 2001 | 831 | 458 | 373 |
Canada | 2005 | 15,071 | 8334 | 6737 |
USA | 2003 | 16,596 | 8449 | 8147 |
Belgium | 2005–06 | 4857 | 2513 | 2344 |
France | 1998–99 | 11,652 | 5915 | 5737 |
Germany | 2001–02 | 7233 | 3881 | 3352 |
Netherlands | 2000 | 10,088 | 6098 | 3990 |
United Kingdom | 2000–01 | 14,361 | 7342 | 7019 |
Finland | 1999–00 | 3928 | 2093 | 1835 |
Norway | 2000–01 | 2512 | 1237 | 1275 |
Sweden | 2000–01 | 3568 | 2019 | 1549 |
Bulgaria | 2001–02 | 5109 | 2656 | 2453 |
Estonia | 1999–00 | 4076 | 2183 | 1893 |
Latvia | 2003 | 2667 | 1483 | 1184 |
Lithuania | 2003 | 3332 | 1823 | 1509 |
Poland | 2003–04 | 16,427 | 9403 | 7024 |
Slovenia | 2000–01 | 4824 | 2552 | 2272 |
Italy | 2002–03 | 34,024 | 17,483 | 16,541 |
Spain | 2002–03 | 32,757 | 17,308 | 15,449 |
Turkey | 2006 | 19,663 | 9812 | 9851 |
Japan | 2006 | 12,730 | 6615 | 6115 |
Korea | 2004 | 52,556 | 28,412 | 24,144 |
Open AccessThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.