Abstract
Individuals with heavy paid and unpaid work burdens may experience time deprivations that restrict their well-being and put them at risk of becoming or remaining income poor. Because unpaid work outside of the market is not captured in most large survey-based datasets, time poverty is rarely recognized in policy and practice. Yet income poverty and time poverty are mutually reinforcing; they can sap energy and impede effective decision-making, thus perpetuating the state of poverty. This essay offers a five-step approach to conceptualizing and measuring time poverty and it compares time poverty rates by gender across a range of developing countries. Results show that women have higher time poverty rates than men in most cases, with the main exception being countries with low rates of female labor force participation. Policies that strengthen physical and social infrastructure, thereby decreasing the time needed for unpaid household work, have demonstrable effects on reducing time poverty. Time poverty is a gendered issue, with relatively more women than men considered to be time poor. 1 At issue is the disproportionately large amount of time that women spend in unpaid work, which constrains their ability to engage in other spheres. Women's total work burdens are often higher than those for men and they perform relatively more unpaid housework and care work. A similar argument holds for children, with girls spending more time than boys on unpaid work. On average, globally , women spend four hours and thirty-seven minutes per day on unpaid care work, with men doing less than half that amount, and in no country do women and men share the unpaid care work equally.