VOX  CEPR Policy Portal

People combine goods and time in household production, and theory suggests that as their wage rates rise, they will substitute goods-intensive for time-intensive activities. However, it is not clear how activities that take essentially no, or minimal, amounts of spending, such as sleeping or watching TV, fit into the theory. This column uses data from time diaries for the US, France, and Germany to demonstrate that not all non-work time is the same, and different components of non-work time respond differently to changing incentives.