Time Is Money. . .and Dinner!
Lisa Mancino
and Constance
Newman
Our food choices are constrained by more
than just income, prices, and individual preferences.
Time available for preparing food is also a limited
resource. Preparing food takes time—quite
a bit for homemade lasagna and not so much for a
microwaveable entree. ERS analysis of the 2003-04
American Time Use Survey indicates that, among women,
time commitments are more important than income
in determining the time spent preparing food.
As incomes rise, families are
more likely to substitute money for time because
they can more easily afford time-saving goods and
services. Yet, the ease with which they make these
substitutions may also depend on factors beyond
income, such as time demands of work and children
and the ability to divide household tasks among
other members of the household.
Overall, women spend more than
twice as much time preparing food than men do. And
married or partnered women spend more time preparing
food than do single women. In almost all cases (working
or not, low income or not), having a partner or
spouse has the largest effect, in absolute terms,
on time allocated to preparing food. Married or
partnered working women spend about 15 minutes more
per day preparing food than do single working women,
and married or partnered nonworking women spend
approximately 30 minutes more per day preparing
food than do nonworking single women. The presence
of children also increases the amount of time allocated
to preparing food.
Among all women, food preparation
time falls as they spend more time working outside
the home. However, there is evidence that low-income
working women may be less able to substitute money
for time than women with higher incomes. While higher
income women who work full-time spend about 9 minutes
less preparing food each day for every $100 increase
in weekly earnings, time spent preparing food does
not drop with earnings among low-income women.
These results suggest that, among
women, time is at least as important as money when
deciding how much time to spend preparing food.
Policies and programs aimed at improving well-being,
such as providing assistance to help families meet
basic food needs, should account for both time and
monetary resources. Because prepared food is generally
more expensive, food assistance benefits that do
not also account for time resources may not fully
meet the needs of households that are low on both
adult time and money.
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