No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
TIME POVERTY: CONCEPTUALIZATION, GENDER DIFFERENCES, AND POLICY SOLUTIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2024
Abstract
Individuals with heavy paid and unpaid work burdens may experience time deprivations that restrict their well-being and put them at risk of becoming or remaining income poor. Because unpaid work outside of the market is not captured in most large survey-based datasets, time poverty is rarely recognized in policy and practice. Yet income poverty and time poverty are mutually reinforcing; they can sap energy and impede effective decision-making, thus perpetuating the state of poverty. This essay offers a five-step approach to conceptualizing and measuring time poverty and it compares time poverty rates by gender across a range of developing countries. Results show that women have higher time poverty rates than men in most cases, with the main exception being countries with low rates of female labor force participation. Policies that strengthen physical and social infrastructure, thereby decreasing the time needed for unpaid household work, have demonstrable effects on reducing time poverty.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © 2024 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA
Footnotes
Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University, [email protected]. Competing Interests: The author declares none. The author thanks Nika Deitch for their helpful research assistance and Ajit Zacharias for sharing the Levy Institute time-poverty data. I am indebted to Maria Floro, Naila Kabeer, Ebru Kongar, Tauhidur Rahman, David Schmidtz, Ajit Zacharias, and an anonymous Project Editor for their extremely useful suggestions and guidance on this essay.
References
1 Connelly, Rachel and Kongar, Ebru, “Feminist Approaches to Time Use,” in Gender and Time Use in a Global Context , ed. Connelly, Rachel and Kongar, Ebru (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Charmes, Jacques, The Unpaid Care Work and the Labour Market: An Analysis of Time Use Data Based on the Latest World Compilation of Time-Use Surveys (Geneva, CH: International Labour Office, 2019)Google Scholar.
3 “Collecting Water Is Often a Colossal Waste of Time for Women and Girls,” UNICEF, August 29, 2016, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-collecting-water-often-colossal-waste-time-women-and-girls.
4 “Collecting Water Is Often a Colossal Waste of Time for Women and Girls.”
5 Hirway, Indira, “Time-Use Surveys in Developing Countries: An Assessment,” in Unpaid Work and the Economy: Gender, Time Use, and Poverty , ed. Antonopoulos, Rania and Hirway, Indira (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 252–324 Google Scholar.
6 Bardasi, Elena and Wodon, Quentin, “Working Long Hours and Having No Choice: Time Poverty in Guinea,” Feminist Economics 16, no. 3 (2010): 45–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Mani, Anandi, Mullainathan, Sendhil, Shafir, Eldar, and Zhao, Jiaying, “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function,” Science 341, no. 6149 (2013): 976–80CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
8 Vickery, Clair, “The Time-Poor: A New Look at Poverty,” Journal of Human Resources 12, no. 1 (1977): 27–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Vickery, “The Time-Poor.”
10 Williams, Jason, Masuda, Yuta, and Tallis, Heather, “A Measure Whose Time has Come: Formalizing Time Poverty,” Social Indicators Research 128, no. 1 (2016): 265–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Adapted from discussion in Williams, Masuda, and Tallis, “A Measure Whose Time Has Come.”
12 Bittman, Michael “Social Participation and Family Welfare: The Money and Time Costs of Leisure in Australia,” Social Policy & Administration 36, no. 4 (2002): 408–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kalenkoski, Charlene, Hamrick, Karen, and Andrews, Margaret, “Time Poverty Thresholds and Rates for the U.S. Population,” Social Indicators Research 104, no. 1 (2011): 129–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Vickery, “The Time-Poor”; Robin Douthitt, “‘Time to Do the Chores?’ Factoring Home-Production Needs into Measures of Poverty,” Journal of Family and Economic Issues 21, no. 1 (2000): 7–22; Harvey, Andrew and Mukhopadhyay, Arun, “When Twenty-Four Hours Is Not Enough: Time Poverty of Working Parents,” Social Indicators Research 82, no. 1 (2007): 57–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bardasi and Wodon, “Working Long Hours.”
14 Ajit Zacharias, “The Measurement of Time and Income Poverty” (Working Paper No. 690, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2011); Rania Antonopoulos and Emel Memis, “Time and Poverty from a Developing Country Perspective” (Working Paper No. 600, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2010).
15 Rania Antonopoulos, Valeria Esquivel, Thomas Masterson, and Ajit Zacharias, “Time and Income Poverty in the City of Buenos Aires,” in Gender and Time Use in a Global Context, ed. Connelly and Kongar, 161–92.
16 Floro, Maria, “Time Allocation and Time-Use Surveys,” in The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics, ed. Günseli, Berik and Kongar, Ebru (London: Routledge, 2021), 148–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Manser, Marilyn and Brown, Murray, “Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis,” International Economic Review 21, no. 1 (1980): 31–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Folbre, Nancy, “Hearts and Spades: Paradigms of Household Economics,” World Development 14, no. 2 (1986): 245–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lundberg, Shelly and Pollak, Robert, “Separate Spheres Bargaining and the Marriage Market,” Journal of Political Economy 101, no. 6 (1993): 988–1010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Agarwal, Bina, “‘Bargaining’ and Gender Relations: Within and Beyond the Household,” Feminist Economics 3, no. 1 (1997): 1–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 İpek İlkkaracan and Emel Memis, “Poverty,” in The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics, ed. Berik and Kongar, 274–83.
19 Zacharias, Ajit, Antonopoulos, Rania, and Masterson, Thomas, Why Time Deficits Matter: Implications for the Measurement of Poverty (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 2012)Google Scholar, https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_08_12.pdf.
20 Zacharias, Antonopoulos, and Masterson, Why Time Deficits Matter.
21 Esquivel, Valeria, Budlender, Debbie, Folbre, Nancy, and Hirway, Indira, “Explorations: Time-Use Surveys in the South,” Feminist Economics 14, no. 3 (2008): 107–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hirway, “Time-Use Surveys in Developing Countries”; Floro, “Time Allocation and Time-Use Surveys.”
22 Ås, Dagfinn, “Studies of Time-Use: Problems and Prospects,” Acta Sociologica 21, no. 2 (1978): 125–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Abhilasha Srivastava and Maria Sagrario Floro, “The Dual Problem of Unemployment and Time Poverty in South Africa: Understanding Their Linkages,” in Gender and Time Use in a Global Context, ed. Connelly and Kongar, 193–230.
24 Goodin, Robert, Rice, James Mahmud, Parpo, Antti, and Eriksson, Lina, Discretionary Time: A New Measure of Freedom (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Floro, “Time Allocation and Time-Use Surveys.”
26 Vickery, “The Time-Poor.”
27 Douthitt, “‘Time to do the Chores?’”
28 Kalenkoski, Hamrick, and Andrews, “Time Poverty Thresholds.”
29 Bittman, “Social Participation.”
30 Bardasi and Wodon, “Working Long Hours.”
31 Srivastava and Floro, “The Dual Problem.”
32 Goodin et al., Discretionary Time.
33 Foster, James, Greer, Joel, and Thorbecke, Erik, “A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures,” Econometrica 52, no. 3 (1984): 761–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Bardasi and Wodon, “Working Long Hours.”
35 Hirway, “Time-Use Surveys.”
36 Hirway, “Time-Use Surveys”; Floro, “Time Allocation and Time-Use Surveys”; Buvinic, Mayra and King, Elizabeth, Invisible No More? A Methodology and Policy Review of How Time-Use Surveys Measure Unpaid Work (Washington, DC: United Nations Foundation, 2018)Google Scholar.
37 The World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2012).Google Scholar
38 Rodgers, Yana and Menon, Nidhiya, “Credit and Self-Employment,” in Handbook of Research on Gender and Economic Life, ed. Figart, Deborah and Warnecke, Tonia (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013), 359–77Google Scholar.
39 Eliana Rubiano-Matulevich and Mariana Viollaz, “Gender Differences in Time Use: Allocating Time Between the Market and the Household” (Research Working Paper 8981, World Bank Policy, Washington, DC, 2019).
40 Constructed with data in Rubiano-Matulevich and Viollaz, “Gender Differences in Time Use.”
41 World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021), https://data.worldbank.org/.
42 Rubiano-Matulevich and Viollaz, “Gender Differences in Time Use.”
43 Rubiano-Matulevich and Viollaz, “Gender Differences in Time Use.”
44 Lourdes Benería, Günseli Berik, and Maria S. Floro, Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as If All People Mattered, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2015).
45 Benería, Berik, and Floro, Gender, Development, and Globalization.
46 Kate Bahn, Jennifer Cohen, and Yana Rodgers, “A Feminist Perspective on COVID‐19 and the Value of Care Work Globally,” Gender, Work & Organization 27, no. 5 (2020): 695–99.
47 Cohen, Jennifer and Rodgers, Yana, “The Feminist Political Economy of Covid-19: Capitalism, Women, and Work,” Global Public Health 16, nos. 8–9 (2021): 1381–95CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
48 The information for each country listed in Table 1 is drawn, respectively, from the following studies: Arora, Diksha, “Gender Differences in Time-Poverty in Rural Mozambique,” Review of Social Economy 73, no. 2 (2015): 196–221 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adeyeye, Olajumoke, Oluwatope, Omolayo B., Ilevbare, Oluwatosin E., and Oyeniran, Yemisi A., “Gender, Time Poverty, and Health Outcomes Among Rural Households in Southwest Nigeria,” Gender & Behaviour 17, no. 2 (2019): 13104–17 Google Scholar; Qi, Liangshu and Dong, Xiao-yuan, “Gender, Low-Paid Status, and Time Poverty in Urban China,” Feminist Economics 24, no. 2 (2018): 171–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gammage, Sarah, “Time Pressed and Time Poor: Unpaid Household Work in Guatemala,” Feminist Economics 16, no. 3 (2010): 79–112 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ribeiro, Lilian Lopes and Marinho, Emerson, “Time Poverty in Brazil: Measurement and Analysis of Its Determinants,” Estudos Econômicos 42, no. 2 (2012): 285–306 Google Scholar; Robles, Pablo Suárez, “Gender Disparities in Time Allocation, Time Poverty, and Labor Allocation Across Employment Sectors in Ethiopia,” in Gender Disparities in Africa’s Labor Market, ed. Arbache, Jorge Saba, Kolev, Alexandre, and Filipiak, Ewa (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010), 299–332 Google Scholar; Orkoh, Emmanuel, Blaauw, Phillip Frederick, and Claassen, Carike, “Relative Effects of Income and Consumption Poverty on Time Poverty in Ghana,” Social Indicators Research 147, no. 2 (2020): 465–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bardasi and Wodon, “Working Long Hours”; Carmen Bain, Elizabeth Ransom, and Iim Halimatusa’diyah, “‘Weak Winners’ of Women’s Empowerment: The Gendered Effects of Dairy Livestock Assets on Time Poverty in Uganda,” Journal of Rural Studies 61 (2018): 100–109; , Najam-us-Saqib and Arif, Ghulam Mohammad, “Time Poverty, Work Status, and Gender: The Case of Pakistan,” Pakistan Development Review 51, no. 1 (2012): 23–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lawson, David, “Infrastructure and Time Poverty in Lesotho,” South African Journal of Economics 76, no. 1 (2008): 77–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Antonopoulos et al., “Time and Income Poverty”; Asmaa Ezzat and Hanan Nazier, “Time Poverty in Egypt and Tunisia: Is There a Gender Gap?” International Journal of Development Issues 18, no. 3 (2019): 261–89.
49 Lawson, “Infrastructure and Time Poverty in Lesotho.”
50 Antonopoulos et al., “Time and Income Poverty.”
51 Ezzat and Nazier, “Time Poverty in Egypt and Tunisia.”
52 Bardasi and Wodon, “Working Long Hours.”
53 Ajit Zacharias, “How Time Deficits and Hidden Poverty Undermine the Sustainable Development Goals” (Policy Note 2017/4, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2017).
54 Data for Ethiopia and South Africa is from Zacharias, Ajit, Masterson, Thomas, Rios-Avila, Fernando, and Oduro, Abena D., Scope and Effects of Reducing Time Deficits via Intrahousehold Redistribution of Household Production, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Research Project Report (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Levy Institute, 2021)Google Scholar. All other data is from Zacharias, “How Time Deficits and Hidden Poverty Undermine.”
55 Fontana, Marzia and Elson, Diane, “Public Policies on Water Provision and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): Do They Reduce and Redistribute Unpaid Work?” Gender and Development 22, no. 3 (2014): 459–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Scholastique Kompaoré, Brenda Gael McSweeney, and Jennifer Hilda Frisanco, “The Quest for Gender Equality in Burkina Faso: Female Workloads, Education, and Empowerment” (2007), https://www.catunescomujer.org/globalnetwork/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gender_equality_in_Burkina-Faso.pdf.
57 Dinkelman, Taryn, “The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa,” American Economic Review 101, no. 7 (2011): 3078–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 Rost, Lucia and Koissy-Kpein, Sandrine A., Infrastructure and Equipment for Unpaid Care Work: Household Survey Findings from the Philippines, Uganda, and Zimbabwe: 2017 Household Care Survey Report (Oxford, UK: Oxfam, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
59 Sedai, Ashish Kumar, Vasudevan, Ramaa, Pena, Anita Alves, and Miller, Ray, “Does Reliable Electrification Reduce Gender Differences? Evidence from India,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 185 (2021): 580–601 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Efobi, Uchenna, Tanankem, Belmondo, and Asongu, Simplice, “Female Economic Participation with Information and Communication Technology Advancement: Evidence from Sub‐Saharan Africa,” South African Journal of Economics 86, no. 2 (2018): 231–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hjort, Jonas and Poulsen, Jonas, “The Arrival of Fast Internet and Employment in Africa,” American Economic Review 109, no. 3 (2019): 1032–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 Mora-Rivera, Jorge and García-Mora, Fernando, “Internet Access and Poverty Reduction: Evidence from Rural and Urban Mexico,” Telecommunications Policy 45, no. 2 (2021): 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Suri, Tavneet and Jack, William, “The Long-Run Poverty and Gender Impacts of Mobile Money,” Science 354, no. 6317 (2016): 1288–92CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
63 Neumark, David and Corella, Luis Felipe Munguia, “Do Minimum Wages Reduce Employment in Developing Countries? A Survey and Exploration of Conflicting Evidence,” World Development 137 (2021): 105–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64 Gammage, “Time Pressed and Time Poor.”
65 Srivastava and Floro, “The Dual Problem.”
66 Hanan G. Jacoby and Ghazala Mansuri, “Crossing Boundaries: Gender, Caste and Schooling in Rural Pakistan” (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5710, The World Bank, 2011).
67 Kabeer, Naila, Razavi, Shahra, and Rodgers, Yana, “Feminist Economic Perspectives on the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Feminist Economics 27, nos. 1–2 (2021): 1–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
68 Kabeer, Razavi, and Rodgers, “Feminist Economic Perspectives on the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
69 İlkkaracan and Memis, “Poverty.”
70 Giurge, Laura, Whillans, Ashley, and West, Colin, “Why Time Poverty Matters for Individuals, Organisations, and Nations,” Nature Human Behaviour 4, no. 10 (2020): 993–1003 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.