An Econometric Analysis of Time Use in Finnish Households

Abstract

This essay surveys the peculiarities of time-use data from the viewpoint of economic research. The most popular approach in modelling economic behaviour with time-use has been the household production model introduced by Becker in the 1960’s. However its empirical implication has been difficult. The biggest problem with time-use data is that it has been collected for the needs of societal accounting. Therefore there exists only few observations on a given individual. This creates the problem of zero observations for seldom recurring activities. Econometric estimation is in many cases hampered also by the lack of necessary background variables like income information