National Time Accounting: The Currency of Life

Alan Krueger, Daniel Kahneman, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz and Arthur Stone
Additional contact information
David Schkade: University of California, San Diego
Norbert Schwarz: University of Michigan
Arthur Stone: Stony Brook University

No 1034, Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies.

Abstract: This monograph proposes a new approach for measuring features of society's subjective well-being, based on time allocation and affective experience. We call this approach National Time Accounting (NTA). National Time Accounting is a set of methods for measuring, comparing and analyzing how people spend and experience their time -- across countries, over historical time, or between groups of people within a country at a given time. The approach is based on evaluated time use, or the flow of emotional experience during daily activities. After reviewing evidence on the validity of subjective well-being measures, we present and evaluate diary-based survey techniques designed to measure individuals' emotional experiences and time use. We illustrate NTA with: (1) a new cross-sectional survey on time use and emotional experience for a representative sample of 4,000 Americans; (2) historical data on the amount of time devoted to various activities in the United States since 1965; and (3) a comparison of time use and well-being in the United States and France. In our applications, we focus mainly on the U-index, a measure of the percentage of time that people spend in an unpleasant state, defined as an instance in which the most intense emotion is a negative one. The U-index helps to overcome some of the limitations of interpersonal comparisons of subjective well-being. National Time Accounting strikes us as a fertile area for future research because of advances in subjective measurement and because time use data are now regularly collected in many countries.

JEL-codes: J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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https://gceps.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/157krueger.pdf

Related works:
Chapter: National Time Accounting: The Currency of Life (2009)
Working Paper: National Time Accounting: The Currency of Life (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:cepsud:157

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