Time-use and Income: A Trivariate Relative Poverty Surface
by Franziska Dorn, Kim Sarah Meier, and Simone Maxand
Focus and Research Question:
The paper asks how poverty measurement changes when we include not only income, but also time use – especially unpaid work (care, housework) and leisure. It argues that income-only measures can miss important forms of deprivation and develops non-parametric methods to estimate multidimensional poverty thresholds.
Core Idea:
Living standards depend on a bundle of money and time: households can sometimes compensate low income with more unpaid work, or compensate time scarcity with spending. The study, therefore, treats poverty as a problem of constrained income–time combinations, not just low income.
Data:
The authors use Mexico’s nationally representative 2018 ENIGH survey, which includes income, unpaid work time, and self-reported leisure time. This allows both household-level and individual-level poverty analysis.
📊 Is income alone enough to measure poverty?
New research introduces a trivariate method combining income, unpaid work, and leisure – revealing “hidden” poverty missed by standard measures, especially among women.
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