Health Status and the Allocation of Time

Timothy Halliday and Melinda Podor ()
Additional contact information
Melinda Podor: University of Hawaii at Manoa

No 4368, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we quantify the effects of health on time allocation. We estimate that improvements in health status have large and positive effects on time allocated to home and market production and large negative effects on time spent watching TV, sleeping, and consuming other types of leisure. We find that poor health status results in about 300 additional hours allocated to unproductive activities per year. Plausible estimates of the cost of this lost time exceed $10,000. We also find that, for men, better health induces a substitution of market-produced goods for home-produced goods. Particularly, each additional minute spent in home production saves $0.37.

Keywords: time allocation; labor supply; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2009-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Health Economics, 2012, 21(5), 514-527

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https://docs.iza.org/dp4368.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Health status and the allocation of time (2012)
Working Paper: Health Status and the Allocation of Time (2010)
Working Paper: Health Status and the Allocation of Time (2009)
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