A question of time. Measuring time spent on unpaid house- and care work in Sweden (Statistics Sweden)

Statistics Sweden has come to the conclusion that using diaries in any form as a tool for measuring time use in Sweden is no longer a realistic option due to its complexity, high costs, high response burden, and low response rates. In 2020 a pilot study was carried out to explore the possibility of using survey questions to measure time spent on unpaid house- and care work. This method proved to serve its purpose and Statistics Sweden was commissioned by the government to carry out a survey in 2021. The results were published in 2022. Due to the new way of collecting time use data the time spent on different activities could no longer be calculated for the 24-hour cycle. This implied new methodological challenges and possibilities. From a gender perspective we observed differences between women and men in the time spent on different activities within unpaid house- and care work. There were also differences in the proportions of women and men that felt stressed due to having too much to do. While being single or cohabiting didn’t seem to affect the proportion of women and men that reported often feeling stressed, the occurrence of children did. Among people with children, women reported to a higher extent than men that they often felt stressed due to having too much to do.