¶ The effect of working from home on major time allocations with a focus on food-related activities

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¶ BibTeX

@article{restrepo2020effect,
  title={The effect of working from home on major time allocations with a focus on food-related activities},
  author={Restrepo, Brandon J and Zeballos, Eliana},
  journal={Review of Economics of the Household},
  volume={18},
  number={4},
  pages={1165--1187},
  year={2020},
  publisher={Springer}
}

¶ Abstract

Telecommuting has been on the rise in the U.S. and working from home may affect how workers allocate their time over the course of a day. In this paper, using a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) framework, we examine differences in time spent in major activities between individuals who worked from home and away from home. We use data on prime working-age adults (age 25–54 years old) who participated in the 2017–18 Leave and Job Flexibilities Module of the American Time Use Survey. Results show that prime working-age American adults who worked from home during their diary day spent less time working and on personal care, but more time on leisure, sleeping, and on food production and consumption than those who worked away from home. For instance, among individuals with a spouse or partner present, those who worked from home spent 25 more minutes engaged in food production and 48 more minutes eating and drinking at home than did individuals who worked away from home, which are large relative to the sample averages of 33 and 31 min, respectively. These results show that there is important variation in the daily time allocation of workers in their prime working years and suggest in particular that working from home may allow for substantially more time to produce food and consume food at home, which may provide teleworkers with health benefits since home-produced meals tend to be lower in calories and higher in nutrients than meals prepared away from home.

¶ Notes

Closely related to restrepo2022work

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau sponsored the Leave and Job Flexibilities Module (LJFM) as a supplement to the ATUS. The LJFM was initially fielded in January through December 2011 and asked about wage and salary workers’ access to paid and unpaid leave and the ability to adjust their work schedules and locations instead of taking leave or because they did not have access to leave. The LJFM was redesigned and fielded once again from January 2017 through December 2018 and now includes questions about workers’ usual schedules and their access to schedule and workplace flexibilities, including telework eligibility and participation. The 2011 and 2017–18 Leave Modules are not directly comparable. Also, we are particularly interested in exploring how daily time allocation in major activities varies by worksite and telework eligibility is an important control, so the analysis in this paper uses only the pooled 2017–18 data.