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Using the American and the French time-use surveys, we examine whether people have a preference for a more diversified mix of activities, in the sense that they experience greater well-being when their time schedule contains many different activities rather than is concentrated on a very small number. This could be due to decreasing marginal utility, as is assumed for goods consumption, if each episode of time is conceived as yielding a certain level of utility per se. With returns to specialization, people would then face a trade-off between efficiency and diversity in choosing how to allocate time. We examine these issues and investigate potential gender differences, considering both instantaneous feelings and life satisfaction.

This commentary focuses on the measurement of temporal dimensions at different levels of analysis. In particular, it examines the measures that are available for various levels of analysis for four temporal dimensions: polychronicity, speed, punctuality, and temporal depth. The discussion is meant to spur additional research using reliable and valid temporal measures at multiple levels of analysis.

In this study, a mode choice model explicitly considering travel time reliability is developed. This model quantifies travelers' attitudes towards travel time variability as well as average travel time. Data were collected from the morning commuters who have two or three alternative modes including some public transportation and private vehicles. The survey period includes both a normal period where all the transportation modes were available and an abnormal period where the main major public transportation service was closed. The model is applied to practical commuters' decision making, and one of the findings in the mode choice model is that they pay relatively large attention to the travel time variability. In this model, travel time variability is dealt with as the possibilities that the commuters arrive before or after their job starting time separately. The best-fit model indicates that the commuters pay more attention to early arrival and less to late arrival in the normal period. In the abnormal period, however, their attention shifts drastically to late arrival. This suggests that the commuters behave optimistically in the normal period and pessimistically in the abnormal period.

We make use of rich microdata from the Belgian MEqIn survey, which contains detailed information on individual consumption, public consumption inside households, and time use. We explain the observed household behavior by means of a collective model that integrates marriage market restrictions on intrahousehold allocation patterns. We adopt a revealed preference approach that abstains from any functional form assumptions on individual utility functions or intrahousehold decision processes. This allows us to (set) identify the sharing rule, which governs the intrahousehold sharing of time and money, and to quantify economies of scale within households. We use these results to conduct a robust individual welfare and inequality analysis, hereby highlighting the important role of detailed consumption and time use data.

Relationships have changed dramatically in the last 50 years. Fewer couples are marrying, more are cohabiting. Reasons for this shift include more attractive labor market opportunities for women and changing social norms, but the shift may have consequences of its own. A number of models predict that those cohabiting will specialize less than those marrying. Panel data on time use – particularly housework time – as well as on the degree of specialization in more narrowly defined household tasks from the 2001–2019 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey are used to test this prediction.

The time use data for men provides only limited supporting evidence for specialization. The results for women are much stronger. Women who marry without first cohabiting increase their reported housework time more than those who enter cohabitations (by 3.7 hours versus 1.2 hours). The latter generally make up a third of the difference if they do marry. Expanding the analysis to other uses of time yields some further evidence of specialization.

Survey responses on the degree of specialization are more informative. The raw data show substantial intrahousehold specialization and further analysis reveals that on average married couples specialize more than cohabiting couples. Adding couple-specific fixed effects reveals that specialization increases when cohabiting couples marry. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a substantial tradeoff between tasks; partners who report specializing more on one task are more likely to report specializing on other tasks as well. Given the important roles couples have in family formation and the labor market, it is important to understand this intrahousehold behavior.