Sociological issues occur on a day-to-day basis and many of them affect individuals every day of their lives. One specific issue that I found interesting was poverty, and instead of going straight to absolute poverty in describing statistics and demographics, I decided to research a kind of poverty that many members of society would never even consider. As I came across this study of time poverty, I realized the true effect of learning about sociological perspectives. Many would perceive individuals as being in poverty because they did not get a good education or because they have made poor choices in their lives. However, many would not question the actual life circumstances. It seems so easy to just pack your bags and get a college degree, but most do not realize that these people have families and obligations to them to help them survive. This article mainly focuses on the thresholds of how much time an individual has after performing their daily work tasks.
Authors Charlene M. Kalenkoski, Karen S. Hamrick, and Margaret Andrews’ “Time Poverty thresholds and Rates for the US Population,” was published a few years ago through Springer Science+Busines Media B.V on October 19, 2010. The authors’ main research topic of interest is related to poverty, specifically time poverty. Time poverty derives from the studies of absolute poverty and relative poverty. The United States government has been focusing on improving the poor’s income status. However, this kind of poverty relates to the short amount of time members of society have to get an education, pick up hours at work, obtain another job, while still maintaining their well being and health. In other words, in most cases, time poverty is not by choice, but by the circumstances of life. In this article, the authors investigate mostly the correlation between households with and without children in addition to the time needed to perform daily tasks. This research topic is also focused on the obstacles an individual has to obtain a decent amount of money while juggling leisure time, education, and time pressure. The theory is investigated mainly on the amount of time (in minutes) a person has left over after completing all necessary obligations throughout the day. This social theory of time poverty emerged out of the stereotypes of: poor people are poor because they want to be. In this article, the authors thrive for a purpose and recognition of this time poverty theory. They strongly believe that many members of society, who are struggling in poverty, cannot get out of it because of their everyday tasks.
Throughout the article, the authors make numerous references to various researchers who spent their lives researching the effects of poverty, including the year each study was conducted and when it was published. A handful of these references include researchers who studied income poverty, time poverty, buying time, and time flexibility.
The authors stress that these studies on poverty branch out from the main topic of how to fix the amount of income an individual obtains in their status of being poor; income poverty. The authors note one researcher specifically, Ruggles (1990) who had researched three different approaches on poverty, but failed to research time poverty. The three approaches are absolute poverty, relative poverty, and subjective poverty. All are measurements of poverty but none of them truly explain why the poor have so little. Absolute poverty relates to having less than “some objective amount of consumption and income,” whereas relative poverty relates to having less than others. On a different spectrum, the last approach is subjective poverty, and this relates to an individual thinking they are poor and do not have enough.
Furthermore, the authors go on to describe the person who first considered time poverty as being an issue amongst the poor. Vickery (1977) studied and calculated thresholds estimating time management to complete tasks at home. She also included variables such as the amount of adults and children living in the home. The authors of this article on time management then referenced Douthitt (2000) to show that he updated her study based off of the Time Use Survey in 1985. In this survey, the results displayed the “time-adjusted income-poverty raters for the United States in 1985.
Most importantly, the authors of this article mainly focus on time poverty thresholds and rates. In their research, they studied Hamersesh and Lee’s (2007) “measures of ‘perceived’ time pressure” and how it has a negative effect on a diet. On the other side of the approach, there was an objective perspective that compares a person’s actual time in comparison to a standard. Similarly, the authors used researcher Goodin (2005) to study the concept of discretionary time as the time needed strictly to maintain a “subsistence standard of living.” In the last decade, researchers Bardasi and Wodon (2006) spent their time in Guinea to define poverty in terms of leisure time and time spent working. It is clear that the authors used their studies because it was presented and elaborated on in the beginning of their article. Lastly, most recently researcher Burchardt (2008) continued the research on time poverty in the UK and she expanded the studies of time poverty through including personal care, unpaid work, paid work and free time.”
Lastly is the topic of buying time and time flexibility. In this research, Hamermesh (2002) studied higher income individuals and their ability to have more flexible schedules. These people had the ability to buy prepared foods, “pay for childcare, housekeeping, and home maintenance services.” With these luxuries, the individuals are able to commit themselves to other activities in their social lives and with their families and also in work.
The major variables in this study are slightly different than a regular study. This is because people are being tested on the amount of time they have left over in a day over the course of four years (2003-2006). This time is called discretionary time, or time to themselves. The importance of discretionary time allows the individuals to live a healthy lifestyle and be able to participate in “exercise, educational activities, and other activities that provide utility directly or improve individuals’ human capital.” They are measured on a poverty threshold through a time diary that records a twenty-four hour period and questionnaire data from the American Time Use Survey, a continuation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition to the diaries, they are also in controlled activities (variables) based off of demographics and their working schedules. Part of the control variable is that all participants must be over the age of 18.
The hypothesis of this study is not specified in a single sentence, but in various explanations. The research question being investigated is whether thresholds of discretionary time really affect poverty in a timely manner. Fifty, sixty, and seventy percent of the median of the population’s discretionary time measures the thresholds. Out of these thresholds, previous investigations have been conducted from the references made throughout the publication. They mentioned that the thresholds vary by the household type. All in all, they will have different thresholds, but they will have multiple thresholds per variety of household.
Those included in the study were randomly selected in the study through the Current Population Survey (CPS). Of the 60,674 respondents over the period between 2003 and 2006, 57,816 were kept in the study. The reason for taking out almost 3,000 participants is because the researchers’ main concern was to have an accurate count of responsible adults within a household. This would exclude anyone under the age of eighteen who lives with a guardian and/or does not have children of their own. The sampling technique is performed through the American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) that is conducted through the US Bureau of the Census.
The data is collected through the individual’s daily twenty-four hour diary as well as the surveys they participated in through the thresholds 50, 60, and 70% variations of discretionary times. After four years (2003 to 2006), the researchers gather all of the individuals’ data and put them together in different categories of activities. Each person was to calculate the time they utilized for necessary activities such as person care: sleeping, grooming, and health activities. Others are through committed activities, which are whether they are married, have children and are employed. Through these activities the individual must perform the tasks of childcare, household work, caring for the other adults in the home and time spent in related activities. All of these performances are recorded in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) and then show the results of each character. The data in this research of time poverty is mainly through qualitative work. Nothing suggests that it could be through quantitative other than the time keeping of the discretionary time. This time of 1,440 minutes in a day is subtracted by the time of the necessary activities and the committed activities. Each varies with time each day; however each is still subtracted as an average each day. For the qualitative aspect, the surveys and researchers examine the results of time poverty of each person and their description of their daily activities whether it was necessary or part of a commitment that they had chosen before the survey.
The results of the experiment interpret to be that the household composition and employment rates do have an affect on the discretionary time with the theory of time poverty. What was also concluded from the study is that the correlation between the amounts of members in the household with the time poverty theory had little effect on the experiment. Turns out, for each additional adult, there were only six more minutes needed for discretionary time. It also depicted that the amount of members in the household in terms of adults had little significance and influence in poverty as a whole. However, the addition children did have a significant effect, including 35 fewer minutes of discretionary time. They did add to the poverty as well by 0.04. The most important aspect of the time poverty proved to have to do with the employment or amount of hours spent at a job. An employed adult had almost three hours less of discretionary time (188 minutes). In the end, the hypotheses were overall supported, but there were several outcomes that were unexpected in their research data— one of them being the one with the extra adult in the household having little influence in the daily discretionary time. Other results such as having a job and having children appeared to have a significant role in the discretionary time with time poverty. There were many data charts but none with statistics or numbers. They were mainly showing each category in the time utilized. The numbers that presented in the graphs were not very helpful for it was difficult to understand their meanings.
The limitations in the studies are that for one, the thresholds were not completely accurate and there needed to be a more of a variety of thresholds. Even though the median in the recent studies seemed to be accurate, there were still others outside of the median that could not function with the thresholds. Some limitations I noted were that each household is different and it is extremely difficult to be able to encompass results based off of individuals over the span of four years. What I would have done differently is I would have used less years because the average human tends to get lazy and it is probably that many of them just put random time keepings and acknowledged tasks that maybe they did not even perform that day because something else came up instead. Even though they volunteered and agreed to the studies, four years is a long time to keep up with everything going on every single day. In total, that is about 1,460 days that they had to document. Another thing is that these documents were also part of the discretionary times; therefore, these time keepings took a few minutes out of each person’s day. In the end, the overall study seems to be conducted in a precise manner. Many may agree that individual’s change their routines from day to day and especially from year to year.