Abstract
Using 2008 China Time Use Survey data, this paper provides empirical evidence on whether and how Chinese couples synchronize their time use. The main findings are: (1) Chinese couples do deliberately coordinate their time use to gain more synchronous time in household work and leisure. (2) Non-couples also synchronize their activities if they live in the same household, but their time synchronization is much weaker than that of couples. (3) Couples’ synchronous time is significantly correlated to the husband’s and the wife’s labor supply and job characteristics, including wage rates, employment status, and occupation, as well as other personal characteristics and household demographics. This correlation differs between urban and rural couples. Generally speaking, urban couples are more similar to their Western counterparts. This paper is the first to provide a profile of couples’ coordination of time allocation in the socioeconomic context of a developing country, and it deepens the understanding of couples’ joint time allocation.
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Notes
For a detailed description of the 2008 CTUS, please refer to Dong and An (2014).
Non-couple household members refer to all possible pairs of household members who live in the same household but are not couples.
Mansour and McKinnish (2014) find that the presence of children reduces time spent with a spouse in household production. Again, time with a spouse is different from synchronous time.
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Acknowledgements
This document presents results drawn from the China time use survey, but the interpretation of these data and other views expressed in this text are those of the authors. This text does not necessarily represent the views of the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The authors bear full responsibility for all errors and omissions in the interpretation of the CTUS data.
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This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Projects 71173126, 71573146) and the National Social Science Foundation of China (Project 14BRK010).
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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Qi, L., Li, H. & Liu, L. A note on Chinese couples’ time synchronization. Rev Econ Household 15, 1249–1262 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-017-9365-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-017-9365-1