How Does Time Poverty Affect Behavior? A Look at Eating and Physical Activity

This paper uses data on daily activities from the American Time Use Survey and the associated Eating & Health Module to analyze the relationships between time poverty and specific energy-balance behaviors. The authors estimate a simultaneous model to jointly analyze the relationships between time poverty and the probability of a fast food purchase, the number of eating and drinking occurrences, minutes spent engaging in sports and exercise, and the probability of engaging in active travel (walking or cycling). Time-poor individuals were found to have different eating and physical activity patterns than non-time-poor individuals; those who were time-poor were less likely to purchase fast food and also less likely to engage in active travel. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.