Empirical Investigation into Time Use and Activity Patterns of Dual-Earner Couples With and Without Young Children

This paper examines the time-use patterns of adults in dual-earner households with and without children as a function of several individual and household socio-demographics and employment characteristics. A disaggregate activity purpose classification including both in-home and out-of-home activity pursuits is used because of the travel demand relevance of out-of-home pursuits, as well as to examine both mobility-related and general time-use related social exclusion and time poverty issues. The study uses the Nested Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value (MDCNEV) model to analyze data from the 2010 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). A major finding of the study is that the presence of a child in dual-earner households not only leads to a reduction in in-home activity participation, but also a substantially larger decrease in out-of-home activity participation, suggesting a higher level of mobility-related social exclusion relative to overall time-use social exclusion.