Secondary Child Care in the ATUS: What Does It Measure?

Time-use surveys are a primary source of data for studying parental investment in children—an important topic that has been researched extensively. Numerous studies have examined how much time parents spend in child care activities, by parental employment and marital status, as well as long-term trends in parental time spent in child care. In addition to these questions, time-use surveys are useful for measuring the aggregate amount of time devoted to child care activities. Much of this time, especially time spent looking after children, satisfies the third-person criteria for household production and should be included in nonmarket satellite accounts to the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs).1 Thus, it is important to have accurate measures of the time spent in child care.