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

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:47

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.)