A team at University College London is building the world’s largest archive of how people spend every minute of their day—2.17 million diary days from 30 countries, spanning 1961 to 2020. This matters because official statistics capture paid work and spending, but miss the full picture: unpaid care, commuting, exercise, sleep, and when during the day or week paid work actually happens. Without this data, economists, public health researchers, and policymakers rely on incomplete measures of wellbeing, productivity, and inequality. The UK’s new national time-use survey is currently underfunded and poorly designed, risking gaps in the evidence base. If this research succeeds, the Multinational Time Use Study will expand to more countries and longer time series, and the UK’s Online Time Use Survey will collect continuous, high-quality diary data year-round. That would allow governments to measure unpaid work for national accounts, track how time poverty affects health and social mobility, and design policies—on childcare, commuting, or working hours—grounded in what people actually do, not what surveys assume they do.
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Time-use diary evidence, representing national populations throughout the year, is exhaustive—no aspect of any activity undertaken by any member of the society is excluded. It covers the entire range of unpaid work and consumption. It provides information about paid work not available from any other source (when, during the day and the week, does it happen?). It has a uniquely broad range of applications across economics. sociology, public health and environmental studies. The Centre for Time Use Research (CTUR) has a leading international role in collecting, harmonising and analysing time use diary data. It proposed the Harmonised European Time Use Study to Eurostat and initially chaired the HETUS design committee. Its members have organised UK time-use data collections since the early 1980s, sometimes collaborating with, sometimes (eg 2014-15) substituting for, the Office of National Statistics. It provides consultancy services for academic researchers and government agencies (recently the Social Mobility Commission and the ILO) It compiles the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS), currently including >100 surveys covering 30 countries from 1961 to 2020, the largest collection of fully anonymised, publicly downloadable time-diary microdata available anywhere, with 2.17 million days of data ready-prepared for comparative analysis, and >2000 users. It writes downloadable programmes simplifying access to, and increasing usability of, complex-structured diary datasets, It carries out research on diary design and performance, and investigations of gender, class and age variations in time use, household processes for providing care and money income, of the health and wellbeing effects of physical exercise, on work and recreational practices, and on innovations in National Accounts. The ESRC has been supporting CTUR, providing grants 2004-2013 and then Centre and Legacy funding (2014-2024). UCL has now agreed to appoint a new permanent Professorial member of staff to lead the CTUR program from September 2025 (replacing Gershuny as Director). The current grant proposal is intended to cover this transitional period (legacy funding ends September 2024; Gershuny will remain in an advisory role after the new appointment). CTUR is actively collaborating with the ONS and the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence based at Kings College London, contributing to the design of the UK’s new national time-use survey. This “Online Time Use Survey” OTUS) is currently underfunded, needing more respondents, and—rather than the currently proposed reduction from two to one monthly samples-per-year—a more continuous spread of sampling across the year. ESCoE/CTUR is also concerned about the design of the current OTUS instrument. Our aim is to arrive at a shared design, meeting both the ONS’ immediate needs, and those of the wider research community that can be supported by the ESRC. This proposal includes five work packages: Contributing to the development of new time dairy samples for a variety of research purposes. Supporting the collection of new UK time-use survey data by the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence in collaboration with the ONS Extending the coverage of the MTUS—lengthening existing national data series with the latest surveys, and enlarging it to include new countries. Developing new methods for extending the scope of National Accounts, and producing other time-based social indicators of individual and collective wellbeing. Advising new and continuing users on the design, collection and analysis of time diary data; preparing and delivering online course materials. Training via short courses, a doctoral studentship, secondments and hosting visitors.
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