Publications
Publications
- 2022
Measuring Time Use in Rural India: Design and Validation of a Low-Cost Survey Module
By: Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, Elena Stacy and Charity Troyer Moore
Abstract
Time use data can help us understand individual labor supply choices, especially
for women who often provide unpaid care and home production. Although
enumerator-assisted diary-based time use data collection is suitable for
low-literacy populations, it is costly and rarely used. We create a short low-cost,
scalable alternative. It captures broad time use categories determined by context;
here, allocations between market work, household labor, and leisure. Field
experiments show that this module measures average time use across broad categories
as well as the assisted diary approach. We also show how the module
can capture multitasking for a specific category of interest. Its shortcomings
are short duration activity capture and the need for careful category selection.
The module’s brevity and low cost make it a viable method to measure time use
in regular household and labor force surveys, facilitating tracking of individual
work and leisure patterns as economies develop.
Keywords
Time Use; Household; Rural Scope; Developing Countries and Economies; Time Management; Analytics and Data Science; Surveys
Citation
Field, Erica, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, Elena Stacy, and Charity Troyer Moore. "Measuring Time Use in Rural India: Design and Validation of a Low-Cost Survey Module." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29671, January 2022. (Revised September 2022.)