Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

In this paper, I use time use surveys for several countries to analyze the relationship between time allocation, income, and economic development. I find that while in developed countries there is a well-known leisure gap with respect to income, with the poor having more leisure than the rich, there is no such pattern in developing economies. For many developing countries in my sample the opposite is true: the income poor are also time poor. To shed light on why the leisure profiles are different between developed and developing countries, I perform several statistical analyses based on decomposition and regression methods for each country. These analyses suggest that much of the differences in leisure profiles can be accounted for by underlying inequalities in access to basic facilities and the prevalence of subsistence work in developing countries. For instance, lack of access to electricity is associated with women having seven fewer hours of leisure time per week in Colombia, while subsistence work can statistically account for up to fifty-six percentage points of the difference in leisure inequality between men in the United States and Ghana.