“Mondays at the sun”: Unemployment, Time Use, and Consumption Patterns in Spain

This paper is a first step towards learning about the implications of unemployment with regard to the combination of consumption expenditures and time use within households under the theoretical base on Becker’s (1964) household production theory. We examine the Spanish experience, where the unemployment rate was above 15% since the early 1980s up to the late 1990s and, clearly, many unemployed workers were out of jobs involuntarily, hence forced to adjust their time and consumption allocation patterns accordingly. Our results, overall, seem consistent with the main prediction of the household production theory. What we found is that time intensive commodities (passive leisure, active leisure, housework and child care) are produced more in the households with unemployed individuals. We also find that (with the exception of single females) the proportion of consumption expenditures in time saving goods is lower in the households with unemployed individuals.