Revisiting Time availability and Time Use : Evidence from the COVID-19 Lockdown in Singapore

Using 2018-2020 panel data from Singapore, we investigate the impact of time savings from telecommuting on married parents’ time expenditures on employment, household chores, and childcare. We measure time savings using respondents’ pre-pandemic commute times reported in 2018 and use a two-way fixed effects model to measure the impacts on time use patterns caused by unforeseen strict mandates to work from home during the lockdown period. We find that time savings increased time use in the domestic sphere, but reduced time spent on paid labor. During the lockdown, for every minute saved from telecommuting, working parents increased time spent on housework and childcare by an average of 0.3 minutes and 0.9 minutes respectively. After the lockdown ended, parents continued to spend 0.6 minutes more on childcare for every minute saved. These patterns are driven by mothers who increased time spent on childcare by an average of 1.4 minutes for every minute saved during the lockdown, and continued to spend 0.9 minutes more on childcare after the lockdown ended. Effects were significantly larger among households with at least one high-income earner or those with no access to outside help. Our results show that time availability was a significant predictor of changes in time use of childcare during the pandemic and that this effect was heavily gendered with mothers reallocating more time savings towards childcare, which persisted after the lockdown ended