Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Time, particularly in the United States, is often viewed as a scarce resource. Unlike other resources of interest to social scientists, however, time is evenly distributed in the sense that every individual faces the same 24-hour constraint. Despite its apparent equality, time allocation is a major indicator of social differentiation and stratification. Social theorist Thorstein Veblen (1953) argued over a century ago, for example, that elites show their status partly by the way they spend their leisure time. Further, people with more income can afford to trade paid work time for leisure time as well as purchase time-saving goods and services (such as prepared meals and house cleaning) than people with less income. Perhaps most importantly, the choices people make about their time use has significant implications for their health, financial security, and general life satisfaction. In addition to people's personal preferences, myriad norms (and even laws) govern how people should use their time – how much time is appropriate to spend at work, how much time is needed to care for family, and even how much time one should spend brushing one's teeth each night. Thus, at the social level, people's time use patterns reflect how societies value categories such as work, family, and leisure. There are three primary ways to measure people's time use: (1) asking respondents to indicate on ... log in or subscribe to read full text