Time to eat: household production under increasing income inequality

and to Mark Pocock for research assistance. Eating requires the raw food materials that make up meals and also the time devoted to buying food, preparing meals and eating them, and cleaning up afterwards. Using time-diary and expenditure data for the U.S. for 1985 and 2003, I examine how income and time prices affect time and goods inputs into this household-produced commodity. Focusing on these two years, between which income and earnings inequality increased, allows examining how household production is affected by changing economic opportunities. The results demonstrate that both inputs into eating increase with income, and that higher time prices at a given level of income reduce time inputs. Over this period the relative goods intensity of producing this commodity increased, especially at the lower part of the income distribution, and the average time input dropped substantially. The results are consistent with goods-time substitution being relatively difficult for eating and with substitution being more difficult as production expands. I