Supporting Healthy Marriage: Spending Time Together: Time Use Estimates for Economically Disadvantaged and Nondisadvantaged Married Couples in the United States. Working Paper

摘要

A number of leading marriage and relationship education programs encourage couples to value and to understand the benefits of spending time together, as it is an important condition for a flourishing relationship. There has been some concern that poor couples may have less time and energy for each other than other couples--and less time and energy to attend relationship education programs--because of the demands they face simply to meet basic needs. Using data from the 2003 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), this paper provides the national estimates of time spent together by married parents at varying levels of income and education. The sample includes 5,729 married parents who were living together with one or more children under age 18.