Time use and time budgets: improvements, future challenges and recommendations

Time-use statistics offer a unique tool for exploring a wide range of policy concerns including social change; division of labour; allocation of time for household work; the estimation of the value of household production; transportation; leisure and recreation; pension plans; and health-care programmes, among others (United Nations). This expertise will discuss recent developments, improvements and future challenges of time use and time budgets for policy and research with focus on international and in particular German national developments. It is written in the sequel of the last German KVI commission report on the improvement of the information infrastructure between sciences and statistics. Topics are: recent international time use institutions, data archives and surveys; German time use data bases and their access, actual time use research fields and studies; time use and economic and social policy; new methods in time use survey sampling, future developments and European and international challenges. The conclusions recommend first of all a new German Time Use Survey GTUS 2011/12 and urgently calls for its financing and start of organisation. Specific GTUS improvements, SOEP time use issues, a brand new time use panel and a permanent establishment of the German research data centres (RDCs) are recommended in addition.