How Do Working-Age People With Disabilities Spend Their Time? New Evidence From the American Time Use Survey

Abstract

We use the American Time Use Survey to examine the extent to which adults with disabilities-defined using both the new six-question sequence on disability and the traditional work-limitation question-spend more time on health-related activities and less time on other activities than those without disabilities. We find that men and women who both reported a work limitation and responded "yes" to any of the questions in the six-question disability sequence spend approximately 40 to 50 more minutes per week, respectively, on health-related activities. We also find that most working-age men and women who report a disability work fewer hours per day than men and women without disabilities. The largest difference is for men and women who report both types of disability; these individuals spend, on average, 5 fewer hours per day in paid work than men and women without disabilities. On average, most of the decrease in paid work time is offset by more time spent on leisure activities (defined as activities that provide direct utility, such as entertainment, social activities, attending recreational events, and general relaxation) and sleeping, which is likely due to these being default activities for individuals whose medical issues and environment constrain them from participating in other activities.

Benefactors and Beneficiaries? Disability and Care to Others

“…Although this approach has been applied previously in the time use literature (e.g., Anand & Ben‐Shalom, ; Cornwell, ), we examine model fit diagnostics to confirm its appropriateness here. Results from Stata's countfit (Long & Freese, ) procedure to assess the fit of alternative count models indicate that ZINB is the preferred specification (compared to Poisson, negative binomial, and zero‐inflated Poisson) across all unweighted models.…”

“…Although these results were descriptive and not disaggregated by gender or parental status, they suggest nonnegligible allocations to nonhousehold children and adults and greater intensity in secondary—versus primary—child care. Using zero‐inflated negative binomial models to control for differences in marital status, the presence of children, and other sociodemographic characteristics, Anand and Ben‐Shalom () found no difference in adult or child care time between working‐aged men with or without a work or functional limitation. Women who reported both types of limitations spent 19 minutes more in child care than those without disabilities.…”

“…We follow previous studies of care time (e.g., Kalenkowski et al, ; Raley et al, ; Suh, ) and of disability and time use (Anand & Ben‐Shalom, ; Pagán, ) by stratifying all analyses by gender. Our choice of sociodemographic and individual covariates is informed by the aforementioned literature, with all models controlling for age, level of education, race and ethnicity, family income, employment status, marital status, and the presence of additional (nonspouse or partner) adults aged 18 to 64 years and aged 65 years and older.…”

“…Likewise, an estimated 38% of informal caregivers to dependent adults have some sort of functional limitation (Thorpe, Thorpe, Schulz, Van Houtven, & Schleiden, ). Recently, time use studies indicate that persons with work disabilities or functional limitations (Anand & Ben‐Shalom, ) and persons who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (Shandra, ) invest nonnegligible amounts of daily time in care to others. Despite this evidence, much of the existing literature on care work focuses on care to people with disabilities (for reviews, see Drew, ; England, ), typically neglecting to acknowledge that people with disabilities are often active contributors to care relationships.…”

Disability and Patterns of Leisure Participation Across the Life Course

“…Time use is a useful tool for evaluating daily living because it is a bounded resource and because time spent in one activity necessarily impacts the amount of time spent in other activities (Williams, Masuda, and Tallis, 2016). Recent analyses of the ATUS indicate that working-aged people with disabilities spend more than two more hours per day in leisure than those without disabilities, with considerably less time spent in work-related activities and more time spent in personal care (Anand & Ben-Shalom, 2014;Meyers & Ravesloot, 2016;Shandra, 2018).…”