Uses of Time

>> The Time Report highlights the reality and faces behind time poverty in order to provide tools for institutions to better understand it and take action to address it.

Many people in our society, especially the most vulnerable, suffer from the lack of available time. This is why Barcelona City Council has created a report entitled “De la pobresa de temps al temps per a la vida. Aproximacions teòriques i orientacions pràctiques [From time poverty to time for life. Theoretical Approaches and Practical Orientations].” which aims to encourage reflection on time poverty.

The report, written by Sonia Ruiz, Georgina Monge, Blai Martí and Ana Paricio, highlights the reality and the faces behind time poverty in order to provide tools that allow institutions to better understand it and take measures to address it.

Time poverty occurs when people don’t have time of their own once all the necessary work (both paid and unpaid) has been done and all basic activities have been completed. In this sense, having to spend long hours on paid and unpaid productive activities is detrimental to the time that can be devoted to other areas of life, such as leisure or rest. Time-poor people are those who are under time pressure and cannot allocate the desired, sufficient or optimal amount of time to important activities, which forces them to make difficult trade-offs.

Not having time and not having sovereignty or control over its use has an impact on the living conditions and well-being of people, especially those in the most precarious situations, who feel that they can’t stay on top of everything and are nonetheless constantly under pressure to try to do so. It can therefore be said that the lack of time for oneself is not an individual phenomenon, but rather the result of structural and systemic factors that significantly condition time management.

In order to analyse how time poverty takes shape in the city of Barcelona and the repercussions it has on the lives of Barcelona residents, the report includes a theoretical framework that explores the definition of time poverty and the controversies associated with the concept. It goes on to explain the structural and intersectional determinants of time poverty and the impact of time poverty on people’s lives. It then uses data and first-person accounts to analyse how time poverty manifests itself in the city of Barcelona. The following section explores how public policies can address time poverty, setting out the methodology for impact evaluation using time criteria and providing the example of a specific proposal. Finally, future lines of work in the areas of awareness-raising, citizenship and broadening knowledge are outlined.

Barcelona City Council understands that time poverty undermines the possibility of enjoying a full life, and that, therefore, it is necessary to analyse the underlying causes and the manifestations of this phenomenon in order to tackle it. It is with this goal in mind that the Time Report “From time poverty to time for life. Theoretical Approaches and Practical Orientations” was written. Furthermore, and in line with the spirit of the collection, this report seeks to contribute to progress towards a more harmonious and fairer distribution of time, by putting forward concrete proposals and tools for the development of local policies to reduce or eradicate time poverty.