Research note

This research note explores the trade‐offs between various categories of time use during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007 to 2009, using continuous time use data for the United States adult population. Estimates of the annual average time per person devoted to specific tasks, at the peak of the economic boom (2007) are compared to time spent in those same the bottom of the recession (2009). Two frameworks are used in the analysis – the first is the production, consumption and investment categories of macroeconomics; the second is the stages of the human life course from living in younger households without children, through the middle stage of living in households with children, and finally the stage of older households again without children. The note highlights the similarities and differences in the behaviour responses to the GFC of men and women in the United States. It is fairly clear that the decline in market work was accompanied by a decline in household work – thus contradicting a contra‐cyclical hypothesis of movements between these two production spheres. And, although there were significant increases in consumption time, investment time in education increased proportionally more

Baby boom · Boom · Consumption (sociology · Demographic economics · Economics · Financial crisis · Investment (military · Macroeconomics · Political science · Population · Production (economics · Recession · Social science · Sociology · Work (physics · Demography · Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics