How People Across the World Spend Their Time and What it Tells us About Living Conditions (ourworldindata.org) 45
How people spend their time is similar in many ways across countries: we all sleep, work, eat, and enjoy leisure. But there are also important differences in the freedom people have to spend time on the things they value most. Studying how people across the world spend their time provides an important perspective for understanding living conditions, economic opportunities, and general well-being. A study by Our World in Data: Consider sleeping, for example. From this sample of countries, South Koreans sleep the least -- averaging 7 hours and 51 minutes of sleep every day. In India and the US, at the other end of the spectrum, people sleep an hour more on average. Work is another important activity where we see large differences. Countries are sorted by paid work hours in the chart (check the source link) -- from highest to lowest. In China and Mexico people spend, on an average day, almost twice as much time on paid work as people in Italy and France do. This is a general pattern: People in richer countries can afford to work less. Keep in mind that this chart shows the average for all people in the working age bracket, from 15 to 64 years, whether they are actually employed or not.
Differences in demographics, education and economic prosperity all contribute to these inequalities in work and time use. But what's clear in the chart here (check the source link) is that there are also some differences in time use that are not well explained by economic or demographic differences. In the UK, for example, people spend more time working than in France; but in both countries people report spending a similar amount of time on leisure activities. Cultural differences are likely to play a role here. The French seem to spend much more time eating than the British -- and in this respect the data actually goes in line with stereotypes about food culture. People in France, Greece, Italy and Spain report spending more time eating than people in most other European countries. The country where people spend the least time eating and drinking is the USA (63 minutes).
Differences in demographics, education and economic prosperity all contribute to these inequalities in work and time use. But what's clear in the chart here (check the source link) is that there are also some differences in time use that are not well explained by economic or demographic differences. In the UK, for example, people spend more time working than in France; but in both countries people report spending a similar amount of time on leisure activities. Cultural differences are likely to play a role here. The French seem to spend much more time eating than the British -- and in this respect the data actually goes in line with stereotypes about food culture. People in France, Greece, Italy and Spain report spending more time eating than people in most other European countries. The country where people spend the least time eating and drinking is the USA (63 minutes).
How people spend their time (Score:2)
Quarantining due to Covid
Re:How people spend their time (Score:4, Funny)
This is about national differences. People in the US don't seem to seem to spend any time quarantining.
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Varies dramatically by state, which is why Washington has 399 deaths per million and Louisiana has 1438. People here get nasty looks if they're unmasked and can't even enter the most conservative stores without one, while there wearing a mask is seen as a sign of weakness or maybe too much education.
Makes sense (Score:3, Funny)
The French seem to spend much more time eating than the British
Have you seen food in the UK ?!? It makes sense to spend as little time as possible with it near or in your mouth. You just want the experience to be over as quickly as possible...
Re: Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be curious about the methodology. Where I worked previously, people frequently at lunch at their desks. Sometimes breakfast or dinner too. So, how would they have counted that?
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yeah and the 'nonpaid work' looked odd. In one place they define it as 'volunteer' work and in another place 'child care'. I mean , i you are a stay at home mom , how much of the time you spend at home with the kids counts as 'child care' ? All of it? Or are you not caring for children while they sit at your feet as you cook?
Non paid work looked way too low.
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Well cooking is non-paid work as well. Cleaning, child care, cooking, running errands, essential shopping, it all counts as unpaid work.
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Well, it's not called fast food for nothing.
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I guess if you've been raised on a diet of hormone and antibiotic soaked meat, poultry kept in such insanitary conditions they need chlorine washing, GM vegetables created for chemical tolerance rather than taste and all dosed in a heavy measure of HFCS then natural food would taste strange --especially when it's not just served up deep fried.
And 'British food' is an interesting concept. There's more diversity in food types in one street in some UK cities than the whole of some other countries.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
If English food seems more bland it's because the climate precludes growing a lot of the different types of spices and other ingredients that make food delicious. It's not their fault that geography stymied any culinary ambitions the people might have had. I suspect if you go even further north that the cuisine of the various Inuit populations, etc. is even more bland and limited, but no one ever gives them shit about it.
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Wait a minute.
On one hand, you make the statement about the diversity of food available, but then talk about the lack of diversity in spices/ingredients!?! So, are you claiming that it's just bland outside of the major cities (I'd call BS).
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Historically Britain has known that British food is terrible and looked for ways to import better food. Of course at first only the wealthy could support it so native food got a bad reputation as something that people only ate because they couldn't afford anything better.
That idea has stuck even in modern times. Our supermarkets are full of foreign food, the most popular being Indian, I guess because of the old Empire and having a significant Asian population living here who brought their better food with t
Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
France spends more than twice the time than everyone else on personal care
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I remember sending a gift to some British friends in Venice, Italy. They were always worried about packages going missing. So on the customs forms we wrote "British cookbooks" as we figured no Italian in their right mind would want to steal that. The books arrived safely.
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No problem! But... don't tell anybody. If the Italians catch on, the trick won't work anymore.
Differences in mental illness (Score:3)
You might also find that people in poorer countries experience fewer cases of depression possibly because they don't have time for that. They're too busy trying to survive.
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Yes, there are plenty of people who are driven down the "college and white collar" job track who aren't happy because they don't like it. There are many who enjoy working with their hands and enjoy a hard day's work in coveralls that are greasy and dirty at the end of the day.
Plenty of people in the trades who love their jobs even though they're on their hands and knees and outside and physical.
Sitting at a desk for 8 hours is hellish and unsatisfying even though they can be remarkably good at pushing paper
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I've seen various research trying to look at the theory that poor populaces are less depressed, and none are conclusive. There's a persistent hypothesis that lack of access to doctors means the depression doesn't get diagnosed that has never been ruled out in any literature I've seen. What I have seen verified is that there is less depression in countries where the wage gap is narrower -- i.e., if everyone is at the same economic level, there's less depression, regardless of whether that level is high or lo
Averages tell us nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
USA 148 min on TV and Radio?!?! (Score:2)
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I mean, you leave it on while doing other things. But more generally, you don't seem to understand how streaming works.
The "these days" and "in the US" implies that you both think TV in the US used to be non-crap and that TV in other countries is currently non-crap. But streaming services eliminate both the timeliness and locality issues. So you can watch pretty much anything produced pretty much any tim
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Seriously?!? Streaming has allowed us to binge series that we may have missed before. I've personally been watching about four episodes of The Office every day (since I missed the original back when it was on). And I'm looking forward to watching the British version!
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I want to live in that version of America (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah, averages are fun. It helps when only half the population actually works for a living. And it appears they count weekends.
Take a survey of just working age parents and I imagine it would be more like 9 hours of work 5 or 6 days a week, and 6 hours of sleep. Considerably less attractive.
Figures seem strange (Score:1)
Not so strange when you see what they're averaging (Score:2)
I'm Korean? Who knew! (Score:2)
South Koreans sleep the least -- averaging 7 hours and 51 minutes of sleep every day.
That's about the amount of sleep I get each day, if I'm lucky. Closer to 7 is more like it. So bring on the South Korean women! (Japanese are invited as well)
Whenever this subject comes up and I'm asked when I go to bed, I have to get clarification. Do they mean when I'm physically in bed, or when I fall asleep, because those are two dramatically different times. There have been times I look at the clock and find it's n
Greece (Score:1)
Little work, lots of leisure, economic collapse, GDP less than Singapore or Finland both of which have half the population of Greece.