Spending time wisely

There are just over ten thousand minutes in a week, although hopefully you are sleeping for a large portion of those. But how we spend the rest – our waking hours – really defines our lives: be it working, housework, looking after the kids, or sitting on a warm beach (maybe one day). These decisions on how we balance our time are obviously important to our well-being, but as any parent will attest, finding that balance is far from easy.

New research by the Resolution Foundation, which looks at how the UK spends its time, has unpicked some key insights on this topic. Despite large improvements in household incomes since the 1970s, we haven’t traded off any of that improvement by reducing our working time.

But this average hides some key trends. In the past 40 years the gender gap for hours of paid work has narrowed, with a rise for women and a fall for men. We have also seen a divergence between higher-income and lower-income households, with higher-income households now working more. This finding somewhat undermines the idea that the better off you are, the more time you will spend at leisure.

So, it is not surprising that the research also found little support for reducing the working week, in particular among low-income households, who if anything would rather work more hours.

Another key finding is that we are spending more time than ever looking after our children – often at the expense of leisure time. Exactly why this has happened is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps in today’s society, the expectations for our children are greater than ever, and parents feel obliged to support them. Perhaps it is just a changing social norm.

All these findings relate to experiences prior to coronavirus. Although at the time of writing schools and childcare settings are slowly returning to normal, the additional childcare for working parents has been a huge burden on their time, and may have implications for their job prospects in the months to come. This will be particularly true for parents who are younger and lower-paid, groups that are more likely to have stopped working during the crisis.

However, it is not all bad news. While talking earlier this year to new Universal Credit claimantswho had stopped working, some families thought that lockdown had brought them closer together. They said that in the future they would think twice about what is really important for them – not shopping or eating out, but spending time with one another.