Every single one of us has exactly the same “time budget”. 24 hours per day, 365 days per year – 8,760 hours every year of our lives. But how do people worldwide spend their time and what does this tell us about living conditions? How do we actually spend our time?
How do we actually spend our time?
There are many commonalities across the world: we all sleep, work, eat, and enjoy leisure time. But there are also significant differences in the freedom people have to spend time on the things they value most. Studying how people across the world spend their time provides an important perspective for understanding living conditions, economic opportunities, and general well-being.
We spend the most time working and sleeping; and paid work, housework, leisure, eating, and sleeping. It takes together 80-90% of the 1440 minutes that we all have available every day. But if we look closely, we also see some important differences.
South Koreans sleep the least – averaging 7 hours and 51 minutes of sleep every day. In India and the US, people sleep an hour more on average- 8 hours 48 minutes. People in China sleep for maximum hours in comparison to all countries- 9 hours and 2 minutes.
Work is another important activity where we see large differences. In China and Mexico people spend, on an average day, almost twice as much time on paid work as people in Italy and France do. People in China spend time in paid work for a maximum of 315 minutes. While Indians spend 45 minutes less time on paid work than Chinese. This is a general pattern: People in richer countries can afford to work less.
US people spend the least time eating
In the UK, people spend more time working than in France; but in both countries, people report spending a similar amount of time on leisure activities. Cultural differences are likely to play a role. The French seem to spend much more time eating than the British. People in France, Greece, Italy, and Spain report spending more time eating than people in most other European countries. The country where people spend the least time eating and drinking is the USA- 63 minutes. While Indian spend 84 minutes daily eating.
The gender gap in leisure time
In all countries, the average leisure time for men is higher than for women. But in some countries, the gaps are much larger. The gender gap in leisure time is a key dimension along which large inequalities exist. In Norway, the difference is very small, while in Portugal men report almost 50% more leisure time than women. In India, men spend 283 minutes on leisure while women spend 20 minutes daily on average.
How do people enjoy different activities?
Most enjoyable activities involve rest or leisure such as eating out, sleeping, going to sports events, playing computer games, or attending cultural performances. The activities receiving the lowest ratings include doing school homework, looking for a job, or doing housework.
The activity where people show the greatest variation in enjoyment is working a “Second Job”. This likely reflects the difference between people who work a second job because they want to, and those who work a second job because they have to.
(The report is based on the data provided by ourworldindata.org)
