Lost Time ¿What Do the Elderly Do with their Time that We Cannot See? An Evaluation of the Mexican 2009 Time Use Survey through a Simulation Exercise

Time use analysis is important for understanding how individuals divide their time between work, leisure, socialization, domestic chores and caregiving, to name just a few activities. This allows us to explore inequalities between genders, ages and socioeconomic status. But in order to do time use analysis we need to have good data. In the case of Mexico, which collects time use data through pre-coded time-budget surveys, the quality of information seems to decrease with the age of the individuals. In particular, the number of hours that the surveys explain for each individual decrease as age increases. This implies that the surveys, which are designed to capture most daily activities, are not capturing the time use of the elderly adequately. In this paper I use missing data techniques to impute the activities of younger individuals to the elderly, and compare the results with their reports.