Discretionary Time A New Measure of Freedom

A healthy work-life balance has become increasingly important to people trying to cope with the pressures of contemporary society. This trend highlights the fallacy of assessing well-being in terms of finance alone; how much time we have matters just as much as how much money. The authors of this book have developed a novel way to measure 'discretionary time': time which is free to spend as one pleases. Exploring data from the US, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland, they show that temporal autonomy varies substantially across different countries and under different living conditions. By calibrating how much control people have over their time, and how much they could have under alternative welfare, gender or household arrangements, this book offers a new perspective for comparative cross-national enquiries into the temporal aspects of human welfare.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Time and money; 2. Discretionary time; 3. The distribution of discretionary time; Part II. Time Pressure: 4. Time pressure: a new problem?; 5. Time pressure: a new measure; 6. Is it really an illusion?; Part III. Welfare Regimes Matter: 7. How welfare regimes differ; 8. A temporal perspective on welfare regimes; 9. Welfare regimes and temporal autonomy; Part IV. Gender Regimes Matter: 10. How gender regimes differ; 11. A temporal perspective on gender regimes; 12. Gender regimes and temporal autonomy; Part V. Household Regimes Matter: 13. How household regimes differ; 14. The difference that household rules make; 15. The difference that states make; 16. Alternative household rules and temporal autonomy; Part VI. Conclusions: 17. Conclusions; Appendix 1. Methodology; Appendix 2. Data.

The authors develop a novel way of measuring 'discretionary time': time which is free to spend as one pleases. Using data from six different countries, they examine how much control people have over their time and how much they could have under alternative welfare, gender or household arrangements.

Robert E. Goodin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Social & Political Theory in the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University.
James Mahmud Rice is an ARC Research Associate in the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University.
Antti Parpo is Administrator of Somero Social & Health Services, Finland.
Lina Eriksson is an ARC Research Associate in the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University.